


Multitudes.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Series: Multitudes [1]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: 2011 Nanowrimo, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Barrayaran Proles, Developing Relationship, Gen, Komarrans, Occasional Appearances By The Vor, POV Delia Koudelka, POV Laisa Toscane, Rough Draft, Things To Do On Barrayar When You're Not Vor, Time Period: Reign of Gregor Vorbarra, Very Abandoned WIP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 16:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 64,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17227355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: The love story of Laisa Toscane and Delia Koudelka. Or: love in the time ofMemory.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So...this was my [2011 nanowrimo](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/tag/nanowrimo). It's not finished. It's nowhere near a complete first draft. It's never going to be finished. No one is surprised. I'm sorry this couldn't be the femslash epic it should have been. A note on the abandoned WIP nature: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's just not clean or at all finished.

 

Laisa Toscane's first steps onto Barrayaran soil come after a full year of preparing herself for it.

It's hardly her first experience of open air and agricultural planets. She'd first trained herself for open spaces years ago before her first visits to Escobar and Pol, but she'd gone through it again for this situation, albeit for very different reasons. Barrayar's wide open spaces, unfiltered air, running water, and omnipresent weather had an aftertaste to them that Escobar and Pol could never dream to have.

A hundred years ago, when the first Komarrans struck up relationships with the newly-rediscovered Barrayar, Laisa supposes it would have been the same as Escobar and Pol today. It's not the planet that's the problem. It's the history.

Komarr had had stories about Barrayar, the same way they'd had stories about every lost planet out beyond the blind jumps, stories about a ship that had gone through and had returned long enough to let the rest of the galaxy know that they'd made planetfall. And then, a few years later, nothing. They had simply vanished, like so many other planets had in the early years of wormhole travel.

Every planet and wormhole that served blind jumpers and their crews had stories to tell of the ones who didn't come back, ghost stories enough to frighten anyone whose family made their fortune in commercial shipping. But the true ghost stories were about entire planets that simply vanished. Some enterprising and caring souls put together expeditions to find lost planets all the time. Most never manage it. Lost planets stay lost. Remember their names, hope to find them someday, but never plan to see them again.

But then, unexpectedly, a lost planet had been found. A Betan Survey ship had managed the impossible and returned to tell the story. They'd found a civilization that survived in isolation from the galaxy and a population desperately in need of contact and of all it could bring.

Komarrans, seeing the amazing expanses of natural resources, had been eager to set up trade.

And then.... well, everyone knows what happened next.

A hundred years ago, Barrayar was just another planet to a Komarran, one more point on a map spreading out from their wormholes. It won't ever be that way again.

And so coming to Barrayar isn't like coming to any other planet. Laisa had had to prepare for anything. Better to be over-prepared than to be one of those Komarrans who get to the planet but then can't bear to set foot on it. Too much atmosphere and too much history. It can be a toxic combination.

She'd spent weeks in briefings about the work, about the political climate, about how everything in Barrayar revolves around the Emperor to a truly despairing extent. She learns about how the Komarran Shippers Syndicate, their largest trade organization, works with the Counts and the Ministries and the military and the municipal services, how it all fits together, how they made it all work. 

It had been fine after contact. It had survived the Cetagandans. And then it had had to be completely re-made after Admiral Vorkosigan arrived with his fleet. 

But they've learned how to live with it, albeit slowly, albeit painfully. It's better than the alternative, which is not nothing at all, but Barrayaran crackdowns. The worst is not nothing. The worst is twenty years ago.

So Laisa had studied and she'd trained and when she'd said goodbye to her family before taking the jumpship, she'd been almost nearly certainly positive that she would be able to come home again.

This morning marks six Barrayaran months since she'd first stepped out of the landing shuttle. Laisa's used to the gravity by now and used to the open spaces and used to the horizon being where it is. She's used to the light and the way the city's built and she can get across it without getting lost, which is an accomplishment that took two months alone to achieve.

She's settled in.

She's not sure when that had happened. Much of it is probably due to the panic of last month. The end of the fiscal year is always a rush no matter what planet you're on, Laisa knows. It was this way on Escobar and Pol, too. No matter when the fiscal year is, it's a headache.

But most fiscal years at least are sensibly aligned with the months. The Barrayaran fiscal year kicks over on the Emperor's Birthday, which on any sane planet would be a meaningless holiday commemorating the birthday of some past distant Emperor who had ruthlessly forced the entire financial system to bend to his whim and to which they had decided not to recover from because it would be more trouble than it was worth.

On Barrayar, the Emperor's Birthday is actually the Emperor's Birthday. Laisa wonders what they did in years when they didn't know who the Emperor was, when there was all that infighting and then the times when there was outright war over the question of Imperial succession. The entire system is maddening. She doesn't know how it works, only that it does. It probably doesn't bear too much thinking about it.

Laisa has no idea how Barrayarans manage it. At least whoever planned that aspect of the invasion had the sense to keep Komarr's financial system in place. It meant that, had Laisa not decided to come to Barrayar, she never would have encountered it in all its petty and not-so-petty complications.

The way the Barrayarans manage taxes makes her head hurt, honestly.

The Syndicate keeps on a couple Barrayaran accountants to manage the taxes, which means they overpay by an exorbitant rate, but it's a small price overall to pay for what would happen if they didn't. It's expensive being a Komarran on this planet. The cost of bribes alone... well, it's worth it, Laisa knows. It was worse before they realized they had to play along if they wanted to get anything accomplished. Corruption here is a way of life. It's not a sin if it's a saving grace.

It helps that Laisa likes Barrayar as a planet, if not necessarily as a feudal overlord. It helps a lot. She's only been here six months and she's seen what happens to the people who can't stand it. They become shells, hard and brittle, and it's best for everyone if they're put on the next ship home. Those who don't go home immediately only get worse, unless they can find their way to breaking out, to finding some aspect of this planet to fall in love with and to treasure. To stay here, you have to be a collaborator. Some can't accept it.

Laisa's learned to accept it. Her roommate, Joanna Kozani, has been here a year longer than Laisa has, and is one of the reasons Laisa feels so comfortable already. Joanna's a morning person, always up first to make coffee and tell Laisa everything that happened overnight as soon as Laisa can blink her eyes open. But Joanna had been a morning person even back home, where mornings don't mean a chill in the air and the bite of winter approaching.

Laisa always takes longer to wake up here. After half a year on Barrayar, she's gotten used to some things: the open air, the people. The hours are still a shock at times, the day that's six hours longer, the irregular months. It's not normal, she thinks with mild complaint.

But Joanna's showed Laisa all the ways to cross cut across an alley, all the short cuts. It probably contributed to it taking so long for Laisa to find her way around, but once she did get a full picture of it in her head, it was invaluable. She could have learned the main roads in a week, but knowing the full layout of the city has made Vorbarr Sultana inch, slowly but surely, into something she might be able to call home, eventually. One day.

 

\---

 

Laisa had fallen in love with Barrayar from afar. She'd never had the luxury of not knowing Barrayar for what it is, for what it's done to Komarr, but she'd always been able to separate it out for herself. She could fall in love with the beauty of it all. Growing up in the domes, it was natural to fall in love with an agricultural planet, but while some her friends liked Escobar or Rho Ceta or old Earth, Laisa's imagination went closer to home. It went a short hop across the wormholes, on a planet that had made itself known sharply on Komarr for nothing likable at all.

But she'd liked it, despite that. She'd fallen in love with the mountains and the horses and the architecture and the sheer romanticism of it all. And when she first stood on the planet and felt the wind on her face, she hadn't regretted it at all. 

But it's different to be here than to fall in love from afar.

The Komarran Shippers Syndicate organizes monthly outings. It helps acclimate the newly-arrived Komarrans to the planet and it can be helpful even to the old hands who've been there for decades, who have Barrayaran children.

This month, they're visiting a Barrayaran farm. Laisa had been prepared for the scale. She hadn't been prepared for the smell.

Farming on Barrayar is a completely different reality than farming on Komarr. It's nothing like the carefully cultivated dome-gardens and dome-forests, the underground warrens filled with darkness and dirt, nothing like the careful experiments out of the domes, eking out terraforming inch by inch. It's nothing like the hydroponics they perfected on Beta. On Komarr, everywhere that can be coaxed to grow anything grows it and as much as they dare try to wring from it without exhausting the process. But they can't feed themselves long-term. They can outlast one of the wormholes collapsing. They can't outlast all of them being taken away.

The Barrayarans never tried a siege, of course. A direct attack, that was Admiral Vorkosigan's way. Duv once said that, as cold strategy, it was beautiful. But as the cold reality... it's like a space explosion. You can't hear it, but you can see it, and that's worse, because your imagination fills in everything. But Duv's always talking about explosions. Too much time on a planet that has all the oxygen it needs and more.

Komarr's in the model of old Earth's Mars: smaller than its neighbors, cold, but it can be terraformed. It can be made useful. Laisa's worked on Pol and Escobar, but she felt at home the most during her visits to Beta Colony. Beta Colony is simply a sandier version of Komarr. They have a lot in common. They grow in domes and they grow underground. Komarr and Beta Colony have been exchanging ideas and farming technology for centuries, all to make agriculture grow where agriculture doesn't want to. On Barrayar, things just grow. From the ground. Sometimes without any help! It's a marvel and Laisa will never stop being marveled by it.

 

But the excursions organized by the Syndicate aren't enough. Laisa drags Joanna all over the place, doing as much sight-seeing as she can, seeing first everything she'd always wanted to see, and then more as she finds new and more interesting ways of indulging her passions, as she calls it, or indulging in Barrayaran cultural brainwashing, as Joanna puts it. But Laisa goes along with Joanna to botanical gardens full of poisonous plants, so Joanna puts up with coming with Laisa to tours of every crumbling down old shack in a five-kilometer radius that had anything historical happen there in the limited history of Barrayar.

"I never see what you see in this stuff," Joanna says. "It's stone and mortar and some wood and, oh, I see a brick or several dozen, that's exciting. You can see it in the new house next door, too, you know."

Laisa shrugs. "It's not just about the materials, it's about what they come together to form. It's an artwork like any you had on the walls growing up, but one you can walk through, one made more than its builders ever intended it to be by what's happened to it. The art's the building, but it's also the world around it. It turns it from a building into something more. It's a testament to what's happened here. Think about what it's seen, what's happened here, what people used this building for. It's old and has a history to it, you can tell just by looking at it. Didn't intrigue you? Doesn't it make you want to know more?"

"We have old buildings at home, you know," Joanna says fondly.

"We keep them all looking so new," Laisa dismisses. "You can't look at them and peer into their secrets and mysteries. They're just there."

"Oh, so you want decrepit, half collapsed buildings," Joanna teases.

Laisa grins. "They're prettier."

"Not very functional or practical," Joanna points out."

"I'm practical every day at work. Let me appreciate art you can walk through."

Joanna desists, although as the tour commences, Laisa hears her mutter, "So long as the roof doesn't fall down on our heads."

It is just a building, Laisa knows. Humans are the ones who decide that it has meaning, that is has beauty. And so Laisa can find it beautiful and Joanna can think it's nothing worth noticing. But you can't ignore that everything is better set out in the open air like this. It gives it a bite of wind. It gives it a bite of excitement. There's nothing like it at home. Buildings at home aren't worn down by wind and by rain and by snow and by hail and by sleet and by every kind of thing a terrestrial planet can throw at it. She'd never have called Komarr stale while living there, but being here on Barrayar, there's something of a sterility to her memories of it.

 

The tour guide brings them to one of the outbuildings. She's encountered Komarrans and galactics before, because she takes great care to explain what horses are and their nutritional needs. Joanna throws a look towards Laisa. Thanks to Laisa, Joanna knows far more about horses than she'd ever wanted to.

 

"I've heard this story before," Joanna says helpfully. "It's like the one where, the next thing you know, your cargo is confiscated at customs and you spend a year in jail on Pollux Three waiting for someone to bail you out."

"We're talking about my favored cultural myths, not yours," Laisa says. "And that's an urban legend. Your brother's best friend's cousin's aunt is a liar."

"It was my sister's partner's ex-partner, actually," Joanna says. "And I think it was a holovid plot, not an urban legend."

 

\---

 

Laisa settles down behind the angry comconsole, already wondering what's happened now. Things at home don't stop just because Laisa isn't there, but she can't be in two places at once. Her family is usually better at not trying to pull her taut between planetary orbits, but when the rushes coincide, it probably can't be helped.

Laisa's mother's messages are always like sitting at the table together, working out a problem and chatting at the same time. And it works when they're on planet together, but when it's a recording, Laisa can't exactly get a word in edgewise. She tunes a lot of it out.

Laisa rubs her eyes distractedly as she watches the message, her right hand going automatically for the budget document and she nods as she follows along. There's more to being one of _those_ Toscanes than merely following along, but there's only so much she can do from Barrayar. Back home, she could have continued working for her family's shipping syndicate or signed on with Sally and Rena's new project. But she'd chosen to take this job, chosen to come here, because there's more to do. There's so much more to do. Her family had made the choice after the Revolt to become collaborators, but the situation back home is still tender and tenuous. Integrating Komarr into Barrayar means that she has to be here, means they have to keep doing this and trying harder and harder, or Barrayar will just roll right over them like they have since Laisa can remember.

But it also means that Laisa is on Barrayar, while her family concerns are on Komarr and spread out in their fleet, and while she can multi-task with the best of them, sometimes she wishes everything was only on one planet.

"And though it is uncertain if anything can come out of this, dear, let's never forget that your aunt is trying, and after this long, that's the best news I could give you," Laisa's mother finishes. There's a blip in the message, Laisa's mother packaging all her letters together for shipment through the wormhole. "Now, as for the other matters," she starts and Laisa pauses the recording.

Laisa turns back to the background program running, showing the locations of Komarran shipping fleets and coded by cargo. She can read the pattern of it and she traces the future positions by habit, leafing through the reports.

"How's your mother?" Joanna asks from behind her.

"Feuding with her sister again about routes," Laisa says. "Aunt Anna hates having to bypass war zones."

"Yeah, well, Aunt Anna," Joanna says. She has a point. Aunt Anna is notorious. "I wish she'd come here, she'd fix half our problems in a week."

"And then be hanged as a witch in some backwater village," Laisa says.

"She'd love that," Joanna says. "What would you Toscanes do without her? She makes you almost interesting."

"I think my mother would be happy to find out what we'd do without her," Laisa says and Joanna laughs.

"Any chance you want to read my annual report for me? I'll read yours."

"Give me ten shares in your family and it's a deal."

They solemnly shake on it. Laisa and Joanna have been tossing shares back and forth to each other since they were kids together having to attend their first board meetings and being bored out of their minds. Aunt Anna thinks the two of them should marry and merge properly, but their attempt at dating didn't last even thirty minutes.

And Joanna might have a point about the Toscanes being boring; the Kozanis's annual report is always much more interesting. But maybe it's because Laisa hasn't spent the entire year already hearing all of this already.

 

\---

 

Laisa strolls down the street of the caravanserai, enjoying the sights. She thinks she'll never get tired of this part of Vorbarr Sultana. There's always something new to discover, some new shop, some out of the way store, a small restaurant that has food right from home beneath the dubious sign saying 'Galactic Cuisine'. Can't call things Komarran, after all, she'd been told by the proprietor, a small man with a voice straight out of East Equator Dome. It's getting better, but it hasn't gotten that much better, he says, and showed her how to spot the signs that mean dome cooking even when they don't say that.

Today, Laisa's strolling along, not going anywhere in particular. The weather's good, that last hint of Barrayaran autumn that she'd been warned to enjoy before it turns into a bitter Barrayaran winter. The Barrayarans experience seasons here in a way that they can't even imagine back home. Here, everyone dresses for the weather, and you can spot the galactics by how much more they dress for it than the natives. Laisa's dressed warmly, and she's noticed Betans dressed even more so.

She stops in the big Keroslav bakery on the corner and settles down at an outdoor table with her pastry and tea. There are several Keroslav bakeries on Komarr and three alone in Solstice. While the Komarrans have surreptitiously snuck in their food to Barrayaran plates, the Barrayarans have had no need to be clandestine about it. The first Keroslav bakery back home is right across from the large, foreboding ImpSec Komarr headquarters. It had been a municipal building before ImpSec knocked down half of it and rebuilt it to be their headquarters and most secure prison, and Laisa knows Komarrans who still won't go without a kilometer of it willingly.

But where Barrayaran soldiers go, so goes Barrayaran food, and some enterprising bakers from the Keroslav Valley had moved in, bought a store front, and set up a bakery to serve the invaders a piece of home. They'd had one on Beta Colony, too, they said, before the second one opened down by embassy row. And then a Komarran came home from Barrayar, one of the few who had been on Barrayar when Barrayar invaded Komarr and hadn't been allowed to leave, and she brought back Keroslav secrets and started mixing them with Komarran delicacies.

That's the Keroslav baking tradition that Laisa's most familiar with, so it had been instructive and interesting, in a truly delicious way, to come to Barrayar and see how it's done here. And even still, they say, if she really wants the good stuff, she needs to go to the Keroslav Valley itself. It's Barrayar; they apparently don't let the really good secrets filter too far out. Something about their paranoia.

She likes this bakery, but she understands better why, when Ursula Rodin came home from Barrayar, she started mixing it with things that are uniquely Komarran. Eventually, the Barrayaran sweetness starts to grate. But honey is cheap here.

She finishes her brillberry tart, watching the crowds pass. There's the usual Barrayaran multitude, but she's getting better at picking out the types that make up the invaders.

 

She stands up and finishes the walk home, peering into stores along the way. She nods at the Komarrans she sees and they nod in return at her. It's a strange, small community, full of nods and gestures and mutual understanding. They're all here on this planet for different reasons, but there's still one underlying reason that they all share, and it gives them a strange feeling of commonality that doesn't exist back home. Back home, they're Komarrans among Barrayarans, but the Barrayarans are the ones out of place, even the ones who were born there. Here, the Komarrans will always stand out. It's the way they walk under un-domed sky, it's the way they go out of their way to avoid a man in uniform. It's so many little tells all wrapped up together, and Laisa once spent two days trying to figure out how she could tell, what exactly made that woman across the road obviously a Komarran while the woman standing next to her was not, and gave up in frustration. There are so many little things, and they all come together to make up the glaring harsh reality of Komarrans living among Barrayarans on a world that isn't theirs.

She takes a longer way than usual, looking interestedly at the houses and buildings as she passes. She can identify different architectural styles and fads that came and went, and amuses herself by trying to figure out if a clump of houses all looking similar was due to some disaster destroying the previous structures or was an intentional pull-down-and-renovation. On Komarr, it could only be because of a structural problem, because construction causes so many problems inside a closed environment that it can only happen for specific reasons.

The Barrayarans ignore that whenever they please, but, probably because of that, Komarrans make a particular point of keeping to those rules much more strictly than they ever did before the invasion. That it takes an external opponent to unite a group of people has many applications, but Komarrans's opinions and perspectives on enforcement of annoying municipal rules must be one of the more strange ways that's been found to be true.

She passes through an old square and looks up at the second and third stories. Some of the stores have new facades on the first floor, but the upper floors remain in the old stone and brick exteriors. One building catches her eye and she strains to make out the name of the building engraved on the fourth floor. After a few minutes, she gives it up as futile. She'd have to be standing in one of the facing buildings to get a good vantage point on it.

The next few blocks are older buildings, but then they mix in with some newer ones. Each building is different from the one next to it, making the effect that of a kaleidoscope of colors and styles. It's one of the most beautiful things on Barrayar, Laisa sometimes thinks, how different the exteriors and interiors of buildings can be that are just next to each other. It's not that way back home and it's not that way on Beta Colony, where buildings are merely spaces inside the underground world. Pol is very regimented, built in waves as the colonists expanded. Escobar comes close, but Escobar was always building with galactically-advanced materials. Barrayar didn't have any of that. They built from what they had. It has the effect of making even their most expensive and elaborate mansions look rustic and architecturally unique, like it's something from Old Earth, like it belongs in a historical architecture and design course

Laisa turns onto the street where she lives. Once, this must have been where the rich lived. The buildings are significantly larger, with open areas filled with plants and wandering paths in front of buildings, behind buildings, and even between buildings. They're all apartment complexes now, with the exception of one down at the far end of the street, before the turn towards the river, that's now the headquarters for some organization.

It's mostly off-worlders in this area because of its proximity to the Komarran expat business community and the embassies. It's right in the middle of the city, which Laisa wouldn't have thought was anything important or notable until she'd seen urban sprawl on Escobar. People are spread out there, and they're spread out here, too. There's no artificial constraints on where people can live like there are back home. Here, if you can put up a building on it, you can live on it. And some people don't even go that far. Temporary dwellings abound, especially during the warmer months.

This is a good place to be an expat on Barrayar. There's an expat-run school nearby and the children rushing around are as likely as not to have been born on a different planet or in space. Laisa hasn't had any interactions with Barrayaran children, but she supposes they must be like children everywhere, except most haven't been gene cleaned or born from a uterine replicator. Even after a hundred years back in touch with the galactic mainstream, Barrayar lags behind in so many ways. And most of them, Laisa muses, her feet turning up the path towards her building, have to do with women. The military adapted nearly instantly, from what Laisa can recall, and better transportation options for the rich came shortly after. But anything to improve women's lives haven't even been an afterthought. They've been a never-thought.

Several of the expats in Laisa's building are Betan and they're involved in groups organized by Countess Vorkosigan to improve women's lives on this planet, but that kind of thing is fraught with problems and issues for Komarrans.

It's bad enough, according to some Barrayarans, that Barrayaran women who can are heading towards Komarr for education and career opportunities and then not coming back to Barrayar. The couple times Laisa knows about when a Komarran woman tried to contribute to an organized event for Barrayaran women's health, they only barely escaped with their lives. There are still so many things on this planet that are closed off entirely to Komarrans. Trying to directly change Barrayaran opinions and behaviors seems to be one of them.

That's why they have lobbies and professional organizations and their own structure and society on this planet, but it's also one of the large, looming problems for the future. There's no way Barrayarans are going to improve their opinions of Komarrans if all they hear about Komarrans is what they get from their own sources. ImpSec has an iron grip on all media and their propaganda forces are legendary. Laisa has vivid memories of some of the propaganda back home, and it was a shock to realize that it's even _more_ intense on Barrayar, not less. ImpSec apparently ran into insurmountable problems on Komarr, but back on Barrayar, very little is beyond their reach.

If they keep staying apart for their own safety and comfort, they're always going to _be_ apart. That's one of Duv's main arguments and he can go round and round on it with anyone who dares confront an ImpSec officer over anything that politically-tinged. Duv gets exasperated by anyone willing to take the coward's way out, and he gets very stiff and stern with anyone who dares to tell him that his way of integration could not work. Duv once, after several drinks, succumbed to the urge to point to his rank insignia and said, " _Captain_ , thank you," and had turned and walked away, having had enough. He'd had a point. And the next day, he had sheepishly apologized to the organizers for having caused a scene. Duv knows what his presence does and he doesn't take those invitations for granted.

It was fine, of course. They all get emotional when they talk about how Barrayarans see Komarrans and how the hell they're going to get that to change. Because it has to, and so far, Duv's the only one who's managed some degree of accomplishment and success in a wholly Barrayaran institution. Everyone else has been working in a Komarran organization on Barrayar, or in a joint venture. But Duv went right into the military and he's proving, and damn everyone who has doubted him, that a Komarran surviving and _succeeding_ in ImpSec isn't a bad joke.

Not that everyone is happy about the fact that Duv has been doing well in ImpSec, but, as Laisa sees it, you can't push for integration and then complain about the most prominent integration success story.

Laisa presses her palm into the building's security scanner and the door opens automatically. She exchanges nods with the other tenants she sees on her way to her apartment.

The building that her apartment is in used to be a large mansion that was gutted and turned into apartments. It's mostly off-worlders here, people who work in the capital and don't have any family less than five wormhole jumps away. It was partially demolished during one of the wars, and the part that Laisa lives in is in the older part. She'd chosen it deliberately. It's exactly the sort of thing she came to Barrayar for, the sort of thing she can't get at home.

She lets herself into her apartment and settles her coat down on her couch before going to look at her private messages. It's better security to have them come here, rather than the syndicate. ImpSec only probably has her apartment comconsole bugged. It _certainly_ has her work one bugged. How actively it's monitored, there's no way to know. Relations between the planets seems to be better now than it's been recently, so perhaps ImpSec isn't listening quite so hard now.

Or, knowing ImpSec, they might be listening harder. ImpSec's always been wary when things are quiet. They think something's about to blow up.

Laisa winces, remembering the times when ImpSec seemed to _make_ things blow up, just so they'd have something in front of them to chase, instead of jumping at shadows and waiting for the boom.

But that's ImpSec for you. They don't think Komarrans can be trusted, so they go out of their way to ensure it.

But maybe they're getting better.

Two weeks after Laisa had first arrived on Barrayar, she'd met the notorious Captain Duv Galeni, late of Komarr, and once upon a time, little David Galen, that poor boy who lost so much in the Revolt. Little David then grew up and ran off to join the invaders and swore himself into ImpSec and the next time he came home, it was as Captain Galeni, the Barrayarans's obedient pet Komarran. Or so everyone said.

He had barely put his head out of ImpSec Komarr Headquarters when he was assigned there, and when he did make his presence known, it was memorable. After two years, he'd made it more than abundantly clear that he was what everyone said he was: that Galen traitor.

And then Laisa had met him. Met Captain Duv Galeni in a room of Komarrans on Barrayar, and even there, even among the traitors and the ones who've gone native and the ones who are trying and the ones who are desperately trying to pretend that they weren't more Barrayaran than Komarran at this point, even there-- Galeni had stood out. Awkwardly, nervously, like a man who had left home at seventeen and slammed the door in its face and knew that no one was ever going to welcome the prodigal son home, even if he wished they would, because there was far too much sand gone past in the storm for that to ever happen.

But still, Captain Galeni had been there. Had attended because he was invited to. Had stood there and dared someone to make a scene. And no one had. They'd invited him to prove they weren't scared of him, and he'd come, to prove he wasn't scared of them.

Laisa had introduced herself and found herself meeting _Duv_.

Duv, who loves Barrayaran history like she does, but will always be looking at it from a different angle.

Duv, who has a doctorate and is qualified to teach on three different planets, but has never taught anything beyond a graduate class.

Duv, who hasn't had a friend outside of ImpSec since he joined it, and has had preciously few friends _inside_ ImpSec, either.

Duv, who is lonely and wonderful and a good friend, and she'll defend that for the rest of her life.

Duv, who is ImpSec's pet Komarran and knows he is.

He wears the uniform like it's a barrier between him and the rest of the universe and, to be fair to him, he succeeds superbly. No Komarran seems to be willing to look past the mark of the invader to see the idealist beneath it, the man who is so desperate to prove that his way will work that he'll sacrifice any chance of going home again, if that's what he has to do. Duv believes in Komarran integration so strongly that he's living it, and he's stuck in the middle between Barrayarans who hate Komarrans on principle, and Komarrans who return the favor.

But Duv, for all that, and maybe because of all that, hasn't spent all that much time around Komarrans since he first left home. There weren't many Komarrans at Vorbarr Sultana University twenty years ago, and there were a precious few in the capital at all. And then he'd been one of the first Komarrans to attend the Imperial Service Academy and the first Komarran to serve in ImpSec. And since the first day he put on those eyes, Duv's said, no Komarran ever wanted to have anything to do with him again.

Serving on Komarr hadn't helped. By the time he'd rotated there -- and Laisa got the impression that it had been something of a demotion and shoveling him off to a different department to get rid of him, because he'd mentioned being Galactic Affairs and in embassies before -- by the time he stepped foot back home, home had changed enough that Laisa thinks some would genuinely have welcomed him and listened to him for his perspective and experiences, how this Komarran had tried to work with the Barrayarans and how that had worked and not worked, and listened to him and learned from his example. And by that time, Duv hadn't thought anything would change, so he hadn't looked for it. And he'd been kept so busy inside ImpSec Komarr Headquarters, working hard to prove his loyalty again and again, that he might not have noticed even if someone had carved it into the dome sphere above his window.

Duv had been shocked that she'd wanted anything to do with him, that she actually liked him and enjoyed his company.

Duv's soothing. Unlike most Komarrans on Barrayar, he doesn't even pretend that he misses home. He's been very blunt that he doesn't have a home to go back to, that home is his apartment a few blocks away from ImpSec Headquarters. He has a family to miss -- everyone knows about Counselor Galen and her brother and what happened -- but Duv doesn't have a family to go back to, even though he has some relatives still back on Komarr. Laisa hasn't worked enough with the Galen shipping interests to know if the Galens would ever welcome him back. The Toscanes are collaborators, but everyone's a collaborator these days. When they've lost people to ImpSec, they didn't lose them the way the Galens did.

The Galens were one of the main families, back before the invasion. They had been rich and influential and served in the senate. Their fleets had been the first to head to New Tertius and had brought back vital medical treatment that even the Betans hadn't had yet.

And then came Admiral Vorkosigan and his invasion. Counselor Rebecca Galen was murdered and her brother died in the Revolt that he'd helped start, his older son with him. His wife had died a few years later and little David had vanished into the galaxy. But unlike so many other young Komarrans with no where to go and no reason to go home, David hadn't gone to Beta Colony or Escobar or Pol. No, he'd gone right to the invaders. He'd gone right to the invaders and said, I'm yours.

At the time, that had been the end of poor, little David Galen, and he'd become a name whispered in the dark. Be careful or that could be your son.

It's different these days, even if it doesn't go so far as having sympathy for Duv's decision. The Barrayarans do have things to offer Komarr, and people seem to realize that now. They certainly didn't realize that a handful of years after Barrayar had brutally crushed the Revolt. But there's going in to the Barrayaran military and then there's choosing ImpSec. One's understandable. The other's ImpSec.

 

Laisa knows there are ImpSec officer clubs, but she doesn't know if they'd be happy to have a Komarran amongst them. And the Komarran social clubs have enough ImpSec spies to invite one in.

 

She calls Duv when she gets home, intending to leave a short message letting him know that she'd heard last night from the captain of the Sonata and that the discs that Duv had ordered from the University of Komarr at Solstice would be arriving by the end of the week. Duv always likes to keep up with what's coming out of the academies back home, and Laisa doesn't mind putting in a word for him with the shippers, letting them know how much a Komarran who hasn't seen the domes in much too long appreciates these words from home, and how much it means to him. Duv would never put it in those words, but Laisa's watched him when she's handed him the shipments in the past, and he's always lightened up and everything he would talk about for weeks would be about this academic paper or that proposed theory.

It's very easy to keep an academic happy, Laisa knows. She has enough of them in her family. She knows what kinds of bribes to use. And Duv's very easy to bribe. Her aunt Pernelle, on the other hand, isn't. Laisa's been coasting for years on giving her a copy of the latest Betan Journal Of Applied Physics two days before it would otherwise have arrived. And, no, there had not been bribes or smuggling involved, no matter what Carla Wagner had to say about it.

But Duv is there and he answers the call promptly.

"Laisa," Duv says. He looks perturbed but happy, which is a strange look on him.

Duv's ImpSec, which means that even if Duv could talk about what he does all day, Laisa wouldn't want to listen to it. But no one, especially not a Komarran, could get far in ImpSec without a blank, bland stare to rival all blank, bland stares in existence. Duv's is usually so good, Laisa has to tell him when he's stuck in Official Mode and remind him that he's allowed to relax when he's off duty.

"Hello, Duv," she says. "The latest volumes of your subscriptions will be arriving shortly."

"Thank you," he says. He rocks back on his heels and blurts out, "would you like to accompany me to a state dinner at the Imperial Residence in two days?"

Laisa's jaw actually drops.

Duv smiles so hard, the skin around his eyes crinkles. "I've been invited. Lord Vorkosigan invited me. Passed along my name, that," he clarifies, "and the official invitation just arrived. Captain Duv Galeni and guest. Would you, ah, care to be my guest, Doctor Toscane?"

"The Imperial Residence," Laisa repeats. She's glad she's already sitting. _The Imperial Residence_? A state dinner? They're _Komarrans_! Surely someone noticed? It's one thing for them to be invited to something having to do with Komarr, and that's not an invitation, that's a command, she's heard from some of the senior officials. Every year, they're ordered to attend on the Emperor. Laisa, luckily, has never been part of that, not even when the Emperor was visiting Komarr. Too young and then not senior enough, and one year when she might have been, she was at a symposium on Vervain.

But at invitation to the Imperial Residence? For something that has nothing to do with Komarr? And Lord _Vorkosigan_?

"Vorkosigan?" she asks, not even trying to make it sound light and uninterested. This is a demand, and she's not going to pretend that it isn't. She has a right to demand this. _Vorkosigan?_

"We briefly served together," Duv says. "He's in ImpSec, too."

And then Duv stops talking, meaning that's all the detail he plans to give her about that. They briefly served together. And of course Duv never mentioned it. He was probably never going to if Vorkosigan hadn't decided to extend a hand of friendship beyond their military duties. Duv's already conspicuous amongst Komarrans; he'd probably go back to being outright shunned if it got out that he was friends with the Butcher's son. There's being a traitor and there's being a collaborator, and then there's being _that_.

"And he...," Laisa trails off leadingly. Because, no, ImpSec or not, she deserves more details about this.

"We ran into each other at headquarters," Duv says carefully. "And discovered the other was on planet. And then he called with this invitation. I accepted for myself, but if you would rather not attend, of course, I understand completely--"

"I'll go," Laisa says quickly, shocking herself. "I accept, Duv." Of course she'll go with him. What kind of friend would she be if she let Duv walk into that lion's den _alone_? "It'll be good for both our careers."

Duv hesitates, and then nods firmly. "It will," he says.


	2. Chapter 2

It's a nice day, so Delia dawdles as she walks home from the university, enjoying the first chill in the air. The Emperor's Birthday is over and now everyone is marking time until Winterfair. The junior officers are scrabbling any way they can to get invitations to the most career-advantageous events, which means invitations for Team Koudelka. There's a mad scramble to plan outfits and a rush to get everything ready. The Pretendership Ball is, as always, going to mark the start of the sprint: to make sure everything's ready, to make sure nothing can go wrong. Winterfair's more important than the Midsummer Review in many ways, even if Da is much more busy around Midsummer than Winterfair. Winterfair is about parading in finery, while Midsummer is about arraying for war. Winterfair is about careers and advantageous marriages and about seeing and being seen. It's about one last chance to show off before it's the long, hard slog back to summer.

Tomorrow night's state dinner isn't any big event on the social calendar and Delia hadn't been trying to get an invitation to it before Ivan had called and asked her to come with him and maybe distract his mother from the fact that he is still escorting girls he grew up with and not escorting some potential daughter-in-law for the formidable Lady Alys. It's one of the small events that Gregor hosts every month, which is exclusive not because of any real exclusivity, but because it's small and therefore the guest list is limited. The Residence isn't throwing invitations out into the wind the way they do at Winterfair. The smaller it is, the more contained and controlled it is. Delia thinks that ImpSec would probably love it if Gregor did nothing but host small, intimate, exclusive parties. It would probably cut down on Illyan's stress levels, and that would make Lady Alys happy. Not that Delia's been noticing those looks of longing _at all_ , because that's so far above her pay grade, to use Da's second-favorite excuse, that it's not even in the same wormhole cluster.

But tonight's not overly political or important, so Delia's not on duty for Team Koudelka any more than she always is. These events always mean something, even if it's just a small word or a soft nudge. Or, as Lady Alys tends to say: they're all important, but some of them have importance that hasn't been fully revealed yet. There are always agendas in play, and if you want to play the game, you have to always be aware of that. Nothing is unpolitical. Nothing is unimportant. Anything and everything can be used to your advantage or your disadvantage. What you think can help can always hurt.

And now do it all in a fancy dress and dancing shoes and never drop your smile.

Delia's ready. Delia's willing. Delia was _born_ to do this. Her mother strategically had only daughters. Upward social mobility is Delia's job.

The sound of shouting sisters greets Delia as she walks in the door and she ducks instinctively as one of Olivia's shirts goes flying over her head. It lands in a heap on the floor, followed quickly by Olivia's scarf. Delia grabs it out of the air on reflex and tucks it into the wedge between the chair and the wall to keep it from being damaged on the floor.

Delia hangs her coat up and wanders into the kitchen to grab some fruit. She takes her wandering towards the open door the shouting is coming from, deciding why not, it's not like there's any other entertainment planned for tonight.

Martya is saying something about economics, and Delia doesn't really care, but Olivia's getting the kind of shrill that only happens when Martya tap-dances on Olivia's love life, so Delia, being the Older Sister and therefore responsible for the monsters, daringly braves the uncertain doom of Olivia's room.

 

"And Ivan called," Martya finishes triumphantly. "Sorry, Delia, you've been promoted to Miles's date for tomorrow night. I'm going to be going with Ivan."

Delia shrugs. It's not like that's never happened before, and it's all just an arrangement for mutual benefit. Ivan and Miles get dates for events, and Delia and her sisters get into the events. They'd never be able to do that on their own, not even now, even with who their father is now. They'd never get invited on their own merits to something like that. Maybe something smaller, with Ma and Da being invited for their relationship with Gregor. But to a State dinner? Never. Even with Lady Alys, Delia doesn't rate those kinds of invitations by herself.

Going with Ivan or going with Miles, it doesn't matter. An invitation is an invitation. An open door is an open door. Step through it, no matter whose arm you're on. And then one day, you won't have to be on anyone's arm. The doors will open just for you.

"I thought you were going with that lieutenant, the one who you went to the Birthday with?" Delia asks. "Academy duty finally got interesting and he had to cancel?" 

"No, I've offered him Olivia instead," Martya says breezily. Olivia rolls her eyes. "What? We weren't serious about each other. He needs a pretty girlfriend to keep his parents from nagging him about grandchildren. I told him one pretty Koudelka is the same as another one."

"At least you admit I'm prettier than you," Olivia says. "Too bad Kareen's not here. I want everyone to witness that."

"You can tell her all about it in your next letter," Delia mollifies her.

"One day, some of us are going to get love lives and start caring about who we go to the Residence with," Olivia says. Martya, for her part, laughs.

Martya, who hates just about everyone, is the one to write a pseudonymous manners advice column for Vorbarr Sultana's second-largest student newspaper, telling everyone how to behave. Surprisingly, misanthopism seems to work well, or maybe it's just all the knowledge that Martya's learned from Ma, Tante Cordelia, and Lady Alys that have been smoothing the way and making her extremely popular.

If Martya ever published the kind of date-swapping amongst sisters that's normal for the Koudelkas, she'd probably get laughed out of the paper. It really only works because none of them care. An interchangeable Vor lord or officer is the same as any other. It's exactly how Ivan and Miles feel about which Koudelka sister they accompany, so Delia feels justified in having the exact same opinion about their crowd.

It doesn't matter who you're with, as long as you show up. Ivan and Miles need to show their faces. Delia and her sisters want to show their faces. It works just fine for everyone involved. 

 

 

Color-coordinating for balls is so important that Ma starts planning each season more than a year in advance. Propriety -- meaning Lady Alys, The Emperor's Hostess -- dictates that a woman can only wear an outfit so many times at public events. Switching things around is supposed to make it seem like a woman never wears a dress until it's threadbare, Delia supposes, the Vor being full of sharp little tricks like that. 

Lady Alys has always been the one to help the Koudelka family with Vor things, since Tante Cordelia never does, starting with stepping in and helping Ma with the wedding, and while Delia does appreciate it, and sucks up as much of it as she can and writes it down later to make sure she won't forget it, she can't help but feel some misdirected aggravation to Lady Alys for the way the Vor are. Lady Alys isn't like that, of course, but she's the one to tell Delia, gently, that wearing a dress four balls in one year to the Residence is not the done thing. Lady Alys means every ounce of help she gives; Delia just sometimes wishes it wasn't necessary.

So Ma plans, ever since the first time Delia was invited to something, with her sisters following soon after. They all rise to the challenge of dressing and coordinating the Koudelka daughters. Because it's not just important, it's necessary.

If they keep to a color scheme, the strategy goes, the fine details are lost. Delia's dress is in this style, Martya's is slightly different, Olivia's wearing a cross between Ma's and Delia's, and Kareen rounds out the pack.

And then, with some adjustments because they don't have the same builds, they make the dance work. Dresses swap around. Ma keeps track of it. So Delia can't wear the same dress four times, but buying four dresses means each daughter has a dress for at least four parties.

And like any general worth her cynicism, Ma has contingency plans in place, too, which is all that's gotten them through this without the cost of outfitting the sisters for society outweighing all of the benefits.

This year, the color scheme is blue. Olivia is wearing Delia's dress from two years ago, which is a different shade of blue, but it's close enough that no one not examining them closely would notice, and Olivia won't be coming in with Delia, and Martya and will be sitting in a different part of the room, so it's likely no one will, since they won't be standing next to each other to be compared. They're coordinating jewelry and wraps, and eventually Ma declares herself satisfied that her girls are well-outfitted for battle.

Not so long ago, the thought of Delia or her sisters marrying a Vor would have scandalized anyone who wasn't Tante Cordelia. But all that's changed and everyone knows it. Commodore Koudelka's daughters are as much Proper Vor as proles can be these days, considering their father is one of Aral Vorkosigan's proteges, their mother was one of the Emperor's personal bodyguards, and that Delia and her sisters grew up spending so much time in Vorkosigan House, they're practically part of the family. It's the first assault on Proper Vor society and they're winning, with help.

Lady Alys would approve of how we look, Delia thinks, looking at herself and Martya and Olivia in the mirror.

Martya's lieutenant arrives to take Olivia away and soon afterwards, Ivan arrives with flowers in hand. He pretends to sweep Martya off of her feet and Martya pretends not to be trying to swat him for it.

An anonymous, but supremely practical, large groundcar comes by ten minutes later, and Miles steps out, followed by his Captain Galeni. Miles goes directly to Ma for a conference that, from the stern look on Ma's face, is mostly a second-hand message from Tante Cordelia. Da meets Galeni at the door with a few friendly words that he always seems to have these days for officers with inconvenient backgrounds. Delia's a little surprised; she hadn't realized her father's attempts had gotten so elaborate that he was trying to commiserate with a Komarran and offer his support if anything were to happen.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that when Da grew up, the only way he would have been let into the Imperial Residence was to clean the stables. Martya likes to accuse Delia of ignoring the past in favor of falling in love with the glittery shine of the Vor veneer, and sometimes Delia has to admit she has a point. But it's not the shine or how pretty it all is, Delia will always argue. It's about systems and how it all comes together to create the Vor and the entire government and the _Imperium_. Tante Cordelia says it's all a construction, constantly requiring it to be creating and for everyone to keep believing that it does exist for it to keep existing. And that's fascinating, even beyond just how lovely it all can seem, when you look only at the surface and never look beneath it. Because Delia looks beneath it all the time, but that doesn't mean ( _shut up, Martya_ ) that she can't appreciate its surface beauty when it's appropriate to do so. She's spent too much time with Lady Alys to not be able to see, and appreciate, both.

"Yes, sir, I'll be the one driving to the Residence," Galeni is saying as Da shows him into their house. "Lord Vorkosigan assures me I wouldn't have any problems with the gate guards."

Galeni's wearing the pin that identifies him as an Imperial Service Academy graduate. Da sometimes wears his district academy pin and sometimes doesn't, but tonight he's wearing it pointedly and proudly, the way he always does when he has to deal with people who think that makes him less. Don't be ashamed of where you come from, Da had taught Delia every day since she was born.

They didn't have special prep schools for proles when Da was growing up, there to teach proles dancing and social discourse and get them on as equal a footing with the Vor as possible. Back in Da's day, he'd had to fight to get into the district academy and then he'd had to keep fighting to look like he belonged in society. And it had been because of people like him that Galeni was even allowed to attend the Imperial Service Academy in the first place. Proles and then Komarrans, and both owed their opportunity to go to the Academy in part to Commodore Koudelka, a grocer's son.

Ever since the Count retired to Sergyar, Da's been doing things like this more, Delia's noticed. He's never exactly hidden himself -- he couldn't, not with his medical problems on display for all to see -- but he's never been as public as he's been in the last few months. He's been almost political about it, not that Delia would say that to him, Da has certain views on officers playing politics. Nothing that ever applied to _him_ , of course; his interactions with the Lord Regent and then Prime Minister Vorkosigan had always been reporting to a superior officer, or whatever, and certainly not the Prime Minister having his own men within Imperial Service Headquarters. And that's not changed. But the tone has. It's shifted slightly, but distinctly. Da's coming into his own power base now, a man with his own power, not just another one of the Prime Minister's loyal men. It's a little weird to see, but it makes Delia proud of her Da, proud of her family, proud of Team Koudelka.

There are a lot of the Prime Minister's loyal men still around, even after the Count moved to Sergyar. There's Da and there's Captain Illyan and Raul Racozy, the new prime minister, and so many more. But now they're loyal men with their liege lord on a different planet. It changes things.

Delia wonders how Gregor feels about all this. He might be relieved to no longer have the Count standing between Gregor and men who were meant to be, first and foremost, loyal to _him_. Or maybe Gregor wishes the Count were back, were still standing as that barrier, making sure that everything was still running smoothly and acting as a lightening rod for criticism. That's half the Prime Minister's job, Delia thinks, being the person that can be complained about and fought against at length without it looking suspicious or disloyal or something worthy of ImpSec's very pointed interest.

Or maybe Gregor's just adjusting, like all of them are. Vorbarr Sultana is a different animal without Vorkosigan the lion tamer around anymore. Delia's still feeling it out, seeing how she likes it. It stands to reason that Gregor might be doing the same. The Count rode herd on this city, and this Empire, for longer than Delia's been alive. It makes sense that it's going to take time for everything to shake out and the dust settle.

Miles helps Delia into the groundcar with a look of obvious preoccupation to anyone who knows him. Delia wonders how long he's been back on planet for. Maybe he's still jump lagged.

"How long have you been back?" she asks Miles as Galeni eases them into traffic.

"Not long," Miles says distantly, staring out of the window. He looks sick, Delia decides, even for Miles, who doesn't really ever look well. But he's looking better than he did the last time she'd seen him, which was right before he'd passed the physical letting him back onto active duty, so there's no need to tell her mother as soon as possible so that Ma could then send a message to Tante Cordelia to let her know. Keeping Tante Cordelia updated on Miles's exploits takes the work of an army, Delia imagines. And right at the head of it is Lady Alys through Captain Illyan. And, anyway, Miles had two births. It only stands to reason that he'd be able to have more than one death.

Galeni pulls over to the side of the street where a woman in a long elegant coat is waiting. She comes forward as the groundcar stops and Galeni keys the door open at the same time the woman reaches out to open it herself.

She settles herself in quickly, pulling off her coat, and smiles a greeting at Galeni before Galeni touches the controls and slides back into traffic. 

"Good timing, Duv," the woman says. "I was just about wondering if traffic had eaten you whole."

"Not for lack of trying," Duv says and then he introduces Doctor Laisa Toscane of the Komarr Shippers's Syndicate.

"And what are you a doctor of?" Miles asks after being introduced.

"Interplanetary trade," she replies. "My thesis examined multi-wormhole shipping strategies, with a secondary focus on the trade-offs of exploration."

Miles lights up. He's always happy to have someone to talk to about wormhole strategy. It's what comes from having ship duty, even if Miles's ship duty comes via a mercenary fleet and they're all supposed to pretend Miles Vorkosigan, who can't sit still, ever submitted himself to being a courier officer. "So do you think we should spend more time finding wormholes and less time trying to hop through the ones we already have?"

"The rewards are more than worth the risks," she says, sounding smooth and practiced. "Consider, Lord Vorkosigan, the effect that the discovery and colonization of Sergyar has had on Barrayaran exports. The value of additional wormhole routes can't fully be quantified in advance, but the return on investment is significant."

"My mother discovered Sergyar, you know," Miles says genially and grins, obviously distracted from whatever had been preoccupying him before with the temptation of telling someone new all about his mother and her exploits. Especially since he can't in good conscience tell a Komarran about his father and his exploits.

Ten minutes later, they're pulling up by the security check for the Residence, and Delia is able to get her first good look at Doctor Toscane. The lights of the security check illuminate the groundcar and Delia's first impression is that her first impression had completely underestimated it. Laisa Toscane is gorgeous. Even for a Komarran, and they tend towards being pretty; some kind of product of that much gene tinkering and never having to let their babies be born with genes left to chance. All Komarrans have excellent genes and even Duv Galeni, who looks like an old Roman soldier from a vid and if he were a Barrayaran, he'd just be plain ugly, has a dashing look to him.

Laisa has the kind of figure Kareen's spent years bemoaning she doesn't have. Amazing curves, the kind that Delia just wants to explore and explore with her mouth and her hands. And she's Komarran, so she's free from so many of the annoying and exasperating Barrayaran prejudices, and Delia's getting so far ahead of herself, she may as well be Miles. She can't start planning out their first date before Laisa even knows her name.

 

They arrive at the Imperial Residence and Miles steps out first. He offers Delia his hand to help her out.

She smiles at him and bends slightly to mutter in his ear, "I don't know why I let you and Ivan talk me into this." At least Miles didn't try to insist she wear heels tonight. If he had, she would have had to have disappointed him and Miles always looks so crushed when she doesn't live up to his Valkyrie fantasies. _I'm not Elena Bothari_ , she will never say to him, because when Miles has been carrying a torch for so long, it's just mean-spirited to jump up and down on his fantasies. Although that doesn't stop her from sometimes wanting to when he unconsciously tries to make Delia fit into his fantasies. Because, ew. Miles is practically an older brother. Or a cousin. His mother's always been an honorary aunt.

"Because you like to dance," Miles replies. "Give me the first two, and I promise I'll find you a nice tall galactic diplomat for the rest of the evening."

First two? Miles must be feeling better than he looks, if he thinks he can manage two dances in a row. He doesn't look like he can make it through half of one without needing reinforcements. "It's not that," she says.

"What I lack in height, I make up in speed," Miles agrees.

Delia nods. "That's the trouble," she says. "It's not as if you have to go faster than everyone to make up being shorter." And despite everyone's best efforts to rid him of the delusion, he's been doing that since the day he learned to dance. It makes dancing with him even more perilous than just the fear of breaking any of his all-too-fragile bones. Dancing isn't a race, but keeping up with Miles on the dance floor is a marathon.

Miles shrugs it off, turning to watch Galeni help his date out of the groundcar. He's staring, but Delia is, too, so that's fair.

Doctor Toscane is gorgeous, with dark blonde hair and with a figure that would make Kareen weep in envy. She's wearing dark red blouse and trousers, not a skirt, which makes Delia think that Doctor Toscane, when she packed for Barrayar, packed for dealing with Komarrans on Barrayar, because anyone who would have expected to have to charm Barrayaran higher-ups on their own terms probably would have brought a fancy skirt for this outfit, and not Komarran formal trousers. It could also just be that Doctor Toscane assumed that any Barrayaran VIP dealing with her would expect her to be very Komarran, though. She's a Toscane, and Delia resolves to figure out which one. If she's the Toscane heir that Delia's heard mentioned, then, yes, Delia completely understands why Doctor Toscane would dress as Komarran as possible and not make adjustments. Everyone would be so disappointed on meeting her if she were dressed as Delia is, in Barrayaran finery and layered skirts, looking as Vor as possible for a blonde prole.

Doctor Toscane's outfit is completed with a cream jacket and Delia notices that Doctor Toscane's left her coat in the car.

Miles bows them into the Residence and they pass by the guards, who let them pass without complaint. Delia notices Doctor Toscane exhale sharply as the guards do nothing more than look at them, and Galeni reaches out and takes Doctor Toscane's hand briefly. Just a quick touch of reassurance.

Delia wonders how long Doctor Toscane's been on this planet for. Enough time to get used to ImpSec to the extent of dating an ImpSec officer, but not long enough to get used to being scrutinized by fully formal Imperial guards? Galeni's much scarier than these guards, Doctor Toscane must know that. The guards are effective and well-trained, of course, they're Residence Security, they wouldn't be here if they weren't. But ImpSec is properly scary and their entire mission is the safety and security of the Emperor. ImpSec used to be the Emperor's personal guards before the end of the Ministry of Political Education and ImpSec taking over that mission, too.

Stevens, Gregor's majordomo, is the next person they encounter, and he and Miles have a short conversation to ensure that none of them have wraps right now that they need taken care of and that Miles is perfectly capable of conducting them the rest of the way to the Glass Hall without getting them unintentionally lost. Stevens gives Miles a steady look until Miles agrees to not get them intentionally lost either.

Miles leads them through the hallway and they meet Lady Alys, standing at the bottom of the staircase leading into the Glass Hall.

"Hello, Miles dear, Delia," she greets them.

Miles bows over her hand and then formally introduces Galeni and Doctor Toscane. Delia watches Laisa throughout, relieved to see her rise to the challenge of being introduced to Lady Alys Vorpatril and not run screaming. Well, she's a Toscane and she's a Komarran on Barrayar. If she were going to run screaming, she'd have done so by now. But still. Delia's happy to see it.

It's entirely possible that Delia's not being rational about that. She has no problem with that at all. You'd have to be very Vor to even attempt to be rational about emotions and then expect to be able to order your emotions around like you can everyone else. And Delia's not Vor. She's definitely already far too ahead of herself.

"Gregor is receiving everyone in the Glass Hall as usual," Lady Alys says to Miles. "You'll be seated at his table for dinner, down from the Escobaran Ambassador and her husband. I thought we ought to intersperse the galactics with a few natives this time."

Doctor Toscane does flinch at that, and Galeni takes her hand again, and Doctor Toscane forces a smile onto her face. Delia's not surprised at her reaction. Usually people have more warning when they're going to dine at the Emperor's table for the first time.

"Thanks, Aunt Alys," Miles says and then he stops and looks beyond her. Delia follows his gaze and sees Captain Illyan conferring a guard standing in the open doorway next to the staircase.

"Uh, Delia," Miles says, "would you show Duv and Laisa to the Glass Hall? I'll be right along."

Miles and Galeni are both ImpSec officers, but if Miles thinks he has to greet his commanding officer tonight, and Galeni doesn't, then Delia will leave him to it. It gives Delia more time with Doctor Toscane and Captain Galeni.

"Sure, Miles," Delia says. She nods at Lady Alys and gets a nod in return. Delia sweeps up her skirts and leads Doctor Toscane and Captain Galeni up the wide staircase to the Glass Hall.

She takes them to the corridor outside the Glass Hall to wait for Miles, and then she smiles broadly at Doctor Toscane.

"I'm Delia Koudelka," she says, because there were enough of them in the groundcar that Doctor Toscane could be forgiven for not remembering which she is, and offers her hand.

"Laisa Toscane," Laisa says.

"How long have you and Captain Galeni been together?" Delia asks, hoping that they're just friends, and she's rewarded by Laisa giving Galeni a look that's entirely friendly and not at all romantic.

"Oh, we're just friends," Laisa says. "We met when I moved to Barrayar six months ago."

"It feels longer," Galeni says.

"Have long have you known Lord Vorkosigan?" Laisa asks him, seemingly making a point.

"Much too long," Galeni says. 

 

 

Gregor's standing to receive them near the door, flanked by four Ministers. He's wearing civilian clothes tonight, which Delia always finds secretly amusing. Every other Vor here is wearing military or House uniform, each the glitteriest they can lay claim to. And meanwhile the Emperor's wearing a suit that anyone might have in their closet. Well, not anyone. Gregor's clothes are always fit for an Emperor and Delia doubts he owns anything like the worn clothes in the back of her father's closet. But it's still not a uniform. It's not anything anyone has to be born to or to earn.

"Is that him?" Laisa whispers as they wait in line to be received. "I thought he would be in that fantastical military uniform one sees him wearing in all the vids."

Yes, and he's _not_ , which is the important point, and it is one that Gregor is making. He's been making it a lot. Delia wonders when other people are going to notice and pay attention to what it might signal.

Delia listens as Miles answers Laisa, wondering if Miles himself has picked up on the fact that Gregor seems to enjoy playing the civilian. Gregor never wears his rank if he doesn't have to, and meanwhile he's surrounded by everyone playing up all the rank they have. It's a very pointed comment, but it's meant to flow slightly below conscious level. It's meant to be a subtle hint. Delia wonders how many people have picked up on it and if maybe Gregor should start being a little less subtle about it if he wants to effect any change anytime soon. When the Emperor whispers, it's meant to be heard as if he had shouted. But maybe he just needs to whisper a little louder. Some of these Counts can be very obtuse when they want to be. They're champions of ignoring things they don't want to see. It seems to be a major skill required to become a Count.

"Oh, the parade red-and-blues?" Miles asks. "He only puts them on for the Midsummer Review, Birthday, and Winterfair. His grandfather Emperor Ezar was a real general before he was ever Emperor, and wore uniforms like a second skin, but Gregor feels he never was, despite his titular command of the Imperial forces. So he goes for his Vorbarra House uniform or something like this whenever etiquette permits. We all appreciate it vastly, because it lets us off the hook for wearing the damned things. The collar chokes you, the swords trip you, and the boot tassels catch on things." 

"I see," Laisa says, and then Armsman Kevi signals to their group.

"Ah. We're up," Miles says, leading them forward.

Gregor greets them as Lady Alys has, with fond informality with Miles and Delia, before getting to the Komarrans.

Miles makes the formal introduction, and Gregor says, "Yes, Captain Galeni, I've heard of you." Everyone around them must notice Galeni's reaction to that, because Gregor adds quickly, "good things."

Gregor recovers from that slip of his usually-impeccable ability to do proper polite Imperial small talk in his sleep -- Delia wonders just _what_ he's heard about Galeni -- and then greets Laisa without any more slips.

After dealing with the formalities, Delia leads the group to find Ivan and Martya, who'd arrived before them, as planned. She's promised Miles the first two dances, and she knows she'll have time to find Laisa later and get to know her better. For now, the mission is Ivan and Martya. Delia hopes they haven't managed to kill each other. There's always the chance that they have.

Behind her, Miles is making uncomfortable small talk with Laisa about Barrayaran-Komarran relations and then about Gregor. They nearly trip over General Vorparadijs on the way across the room. Now there's a man who still remembers that military men are supposed to wear red-and-blues when attending on the Emperor. Ever since Gregor's majority, he's been slowly getting everyone to forget about that, but the old guard never will forget, Delia assumes. She wonders how they feel about how Gregor is giving every impression that he's also forgetting.

They find Ivan and Martya by the wall, Martya already looking annoyed with having to be seen with Ivan for even this long. Soon, Stevens comes in and they go into the Lesser Dining Hall for dinner. 

This is only the third time that Delia's ever been seated at Gregor's table at a state dinner and she watches Laisa and Galeni as they take their cues from those around them about how to behave. They're sitting among the core group of the Escobaran delegation and Delia realizes she's the only Barrayaran at the table whose father didn't fight in that war.

The conversation turns briefly to Komarr, with Gregor speaking politely about it with Galeni and then inquiring politely to Laisa about Komarran shipping. Laisa meets Gregor head on and actually gets him to snap out of Host Mode and interact like the man who runs a three-planet empire. Delia damns herself even as she feels herself falling more and more in lust. She's always admired competence, and competence who can meet the Emperor head on is certainly something to be appreciated. At length.

Dancing commences as dinner ends, and Delia dances her two dances she'd promised Miles before she sets her sights on the rest of the room. It's always about making connections. It's always about being seen.

She catches Laisa subtly conducting the Imperial Service Orchestra with her fingers and grins.

 

\---

 

Even to the last moment, a large part of Laisa is sure she's going to be turned away at the door. That there's no way this is going to happen. As a Toscane, there's a certain level of access she's had, and she's attended some high-level and high-profile events.

 _The Imperial Residence_ is a whole different dome altogether.

A Komarran walks into the Imperial Residence, Laisa thinks, smiling in pure relief as she walks through the doors and no one arrests her. A Komarran walks into the Imperial Residence and is welcomed like any of the other guests tonight.

Duv's presence is comforting beside hers. She can't imagine anyone she'd rather do this with, her first, and likely only, time at the Imperial Residence. She can't imagine anyone else who would be invited and could take her. This is a Duv thing. An only Duv thing. Only Duv has this kind of access and this type of trust. What he's had to do, and sacrifice, to gain this kind of access is something best not examined too much right now.

Laisa looks around carefully, trying not to alarm the guards and make them think that the Komarrans they just let in were going to try to disrupt the event instead of be perfect, proper guests.

The Imperial Residence is a marvel of Barrayaran architecture. There's always something deliberately archaic about Barrayaran architecture, as if the architects never trusted their own aesthetics and instead decided to copy the great works of galactic architecture all at once; reference books had clearly been something kept through their isolated years. But each of the Barrayaran greats have their own distinctive architectural edge.

The Imperial Residence is a barrage of different styles. It was built across a hundred and fifty years, with the most recent construction ending only twenty-odd years ago. It's as thoroughly modern and thoroughly archaic as any building on Barrayar.

Laisa's studied it in her Barrayaran history classes, and she's always been fascinated by how focused the Barrayarans were on defense. What would have been charming if it were instead an innocent obsession with flying buttresses instead becomes at times sinister and at times instructive. The Barrayarans never forget that the Emperor's home is first and foremost a fortress. It is a palace as well, but that is secondary. All luxuries are secondary to the Emperor's safety.

Safety from what was always the question Laisa had asked. She'd been raised to see the Komarrans as the biggest threat to Barrayar, her entire childhood seen through the lens of Barrayaran propaganda. But that was never true. Barrayarans had fought each other for six hundred years before they even knew about Komarr. There are more proles in Barrayaran dungeons than Komarrans and always will be, through sheer numbers if nothing else. You could fit the entire on-planet population of Komarr into the four most populous Barrayaran districts. They can live outside. It's a major advantage. Cities allow sprawl; domes don't.

Laisa's first off-planet trip had been to Beta Colony, her second to Escobar. She'd preferred Escobar, with its architecture, to Beta Colony with its warrens. Beta Colony had reminded her of home, it had barely seemed like another planet. But Escobar was like Barrayar. If anyone invaded _them_ , they had a place to retreat to. Growing up in the shadow of the Revolt, the ability to retreat to the hills and caves around cities had seemed an unimaginable luxury, and a serious requirement for the Revolt ever succeeding. You can't get away from the Barrayarans in the domes. You just have to learn to live with them. Laisa had learned to live with them enough to move to Barrayar and leave the domes completely behind.

Laisa's always been fascinated by Barrayaran history in general, and she's loved to trace the influences on art and culture over time. The renewal of contact with Beta Colony a hundred years ago can be seen as a shock to the system, and its effects are obvious in looking at artwork done even two years apart. There's a sculpture of Dorca Vorbarra that begins and ends in different styles, subtle enough to not too glaringly obvious, but distinct enough to anyone who knows how the changes in the tools and in mindset changes the technique. You can see each act of horrifying violence reflected in paintings and sculptures and public art of all kind. It's amazing.

Understanding the invader is vital to survival, of course, and Laisa has that song memorized and with harmony, but it's always been more than that. There's something so beautiful about Barrayaran art and culture that's always spoken to her. Komarran art was too familiar; she appreciated the taste of Barrayar for all it was, how it reflected nothing in contemporary galactic art, how it evolved entirely in itself, how Barrayaran art was only solely ever itself, never influenced by galactic trends. It reached into the shared past in ancient Earth. It looked nothing like anywhere else in the last six hundred years.

And now she's surrounded on all sides by amazing specimens of it and it's all she can do to not gape at the surroundings like the tourist that, yes, she knows that she is, and if she would get the chance, always would be in this building.

Government buildings on Komarr used to have tours, before. Everything was open to the public to come and watch. That's not the case here; Laisa can't simply sign up for a tour and come see this some other time when she has more time and there's no pressing engagements. This might be her only chance to see this, and so she's going to look her fill and remember this some late night when she has a pounding headache and the weather is conspiring against her and she still has hours to go before she's finished with the latest emergency, and she'll hold this memory warm and soft and safe, and think about beauty.

It all came with a cost, of course, and she knows enough of Barrayaran history that she can estimate the body counts that led to this or this painting becoming the property of the Emperor, or what's depicted in this tapestry. It's all individual horrors, but it's the invader's history. Somehow, it's less real than hers. It doesn't make that much sense when she thinks about it, but that's how it's always been. Barrayaran history has a hint of romance to it than her own history never has.

It's probably supposed to be the opposite; other people's histories looking much more vulgar because they aren't tinted by closeness, and your own history is soft and sweet because it's your own. But Laisa's always been a little weird.

If she weren't, she wouldn't be here right now, because most Komarran women of her generation would never have come willingly to Barrayar, and certainly would never walk into the lion's den of the Imperial Residence. And, triply so, would not have done it on the arm of a Komarran traitor.

Duv looks nervous, too, but with a hint of pride around him. He's dressed as perfectly and properly as Laisa's ever seen him. He looks the model ImpSec officer and it's another sign of how deeply weird Laisa is compared to everyone back home that she only feels a slight hint of distaste at it, her time with Duv having softened the blow. She knows what Duv's doing in ImpSec and she understands. It's the uniform, she knows. It's not Duv himself. Other Komarrans would feel disgusted by Duv, but Laisa doesn't. She understands him too much to think herself all that different. Her family was just a lot luckier than his.

They stop by the entrance to the Glass Hall, Vorkosigan catching them up from behind in time for them to be introduced along with them. Laisa scans the room and realizes she recognizes some of the people there.

Back home, that would go without saying. Any major event of this stature, Laisa would be invited to in her own right, and of course she would know most of the people there, if only with passing familiarity and nothing more. But not here. Here Laisa is the strange one, only here on sufferance because of the man who invited her. And he, Laisa knows, got an invitation because of the man who invited _him_. Miles Vorkosigan.

Vorkosigan's a mystery. Duv's never mentioned him before, but why would he? In Duv's place, Laisa never would have mentioned a passing familiarity, if not a budding friendship, with the Butcher's son. They'd both lost people in the Massacre and then the Revolt, but Duv's losses had cut him closer. He'd been old enough to be a child in the Revolt. Laisa had been born during it.

Like a Barrayaran sculpture interrupted by the Betans's arrival, those few years between Duv and Laisa's births are a chasm of history. They had much different childhoods. And it hadn't ended there. Laisa's younger cousins are growing up in a much different world from the one she was raised in. And Laisa hopes things will keep changing. She would like her own children to grow up in a world where Barrayar doesn't breathe so hard down their necks. And maybe by the time she's ready for children, that might even be the case. And if not, she can always delay children until it is.

And Miles Vorkosigan, the Butcher's son, is friendly with a Komarran and invited him here tonight. Maybe things have changed more than Laisa could have dared dream they have. Maybe there's more hope for the future than Laisa feels when it's late and she's tired and frustrated and thinking of beautiful pieces of pottery, made with the clay of a soil that isn't her own, to keep her warm and hopeful when all there is in front of her is hours and hours of disgusting, depressing details about Barrayaran policy about Komarran trade.

The Emperor is a symbol, but he's also a man, and the man greets Vorkosigan warmly and then Vorpatril equally as warmly.

Lady Alys Vorpatril is wearing a gorgeous dark blue dress with gold accents. When Laisa looks over at her, she is whispering in the ear of a man in ImpSec finery and then he straights and Laisa looks away quickly, her heart pounding in her chest and hoping against hope that Captain Illyan didn't see her looking at him. The last thing Laisa, or any Komarran, would want is to come to Illyan's personal attention about anything.

Stories about Duv make people back home nervous enough. But that's nothing compared to the stories about Captain Illyan. But few things are. Even the Butcher can pale in comparison with some of the stories told about his ferocious loyal terrier. If even half the stories about Illyan are true, he's not a man you ever want to meet, not even in a crowded public room with the eyes of the diplomatic community on you.

Duv touches her elbow gently and the look on his face is sympathetic. And of course he has to know all about the instinctive reactions to Illyan. And he must have them worse, or maybe he's immune by now. Laisa wonders if working with Illyan, with the man who never forgets anything, can in any way inure you. You don't get numbed over time to something like that, she suspects. You can only get more worried about what he has observed with so many opportunities to do so, and what he has inferred from those observations. ImpSec itself is terrifying and works hard to remain that way, but working for ImpSec must be even worse.

Laisa brushes her hand against Duv's as they approach and the Emperor looks up at them and gives them a polite, but very chilly, smile.

"Captain Galeni," he says. "I've heard a great deal about you."

Duv stiffens and Laisa imagines she can feel the eye of every ImpSec agent in the room turn to stare at her, or maybe the weight is only in her mind as the pit of dread opens up and all of the old nightmares about ImpSec flood through her.

"Only good things," the Emperor adds after a moment and then turns to her. "Doctor Toscane," he says, and adds a few words about Komarran integration that Laisa doesn't remember four seconds later, but she's sure was perfectly polite.

And a minute later, she's standing much further away from the Emperor and is too busy being grateful that she just got away with her life, when she's informed that she and Duv will be sitting at the Emperor's table tonight. They came on Vorkosigan's invitation, but that doesn't mean they sit at the high table, does it? But it does, it seems, and of course, back home... but this isn't back home, and Laisa wracks her brains, trying to remember everything she'd been drilled on about Barrayaran protocol and etiquette. But no one had ever considered that she could be sitting at the Emperor's table at a state dinner. This is all going to be a disaster, and Laisa swallows hard and reminds herself that she knows Barrayaran culture enough for this, that she's been immersed in it, that she knows what she's doing. It doesn't last.

When she lobbies the Emperor for better trade conditions, well, that's just training taking over, no conscious decision or brain involved at all, just auto-pilot engaging on the jumpship to prevent an emergency, and she's also so high on her emotions, so completely out of her depth and clinging hard to things that are familiar, can anyone blame her? The Emperor certainly doesn't seem to. He's even smiling at her, and it's not that stiff, polite smile from earlier. He seems _interested_. And he seems interested in Duv, too, so maybe all that propaganda crap about how the Emperor cares deeply and strongly about integration isn't just propaganda crap. Maybe some of it is true.

And maybe the domes are made of sugar and rock salt. But after tonight and all the emotions stuffed into it, Laisa will let herself hope. She can be a pessimist and a realist and a cynic later. Much later. She's surrounded by beautiful things and no one's arresting her for being Komarran and breathing on the Emperor, so she'll take what she can get and not risk anyone noticing that she shouldn't have it after all, and is in fact, not supposed to be here, and arrest her and throw her down into a dark pit like so many were and no one ever heard what happened to them when ImpSec was done with them.

 

\---

 

The Emperor of Barrayar is formal and stern, looking every inch the man whose portrait hangs in every public building on three planets. He looks so much like his public image that Laisa is almost sure, just for a moment, that it can't be real. That this must be an impostor, a man brought forward to play the part. A caricature of the Emperor, not the real thing.

Once he opens his mouth and the public image speaks, Laisa is sure of it, that this is an impostor playing the part. The tragedy, she understands after Vorkosigan explains, is that the part of the Emperor is being played by Gregor Vorbarra. The private Emperor playing the public Emperor. But both, she knows, are the Emperor, the man with complete control.

Vorkosigan's chatting to the Emperor like they grew up together, which she knows that they did. Vorkosigan doesn't resemble his famous parents, but that may only be because how _himself_ he looks overshadows the impressions of his parents.

But physical resemblance aside, Vorkosigan proves himself to be every inch the Butcher's son when he talks to Laisa about Komarr. She supposes she didn't expect anything different. But from a man who seems to be friends with Galeni, well, she might have hoped for something different.

Depending on who you believe, Gregor Vorbarra commanded the fleet in battle in the War of the Hegen Hub, the last major battle the Barrayaran fleet fought. Or he's nothing more than Aral Vorkosigan's puppet, and the hint of intelligence behind those stern eyes is the intelligence of a man who understands his part thoroughly.

If he's a puppet, Laisa thinks irreverently, I wonder where the strings are.

 

"Gregor's looking very Hamlet tonight," Delia whispers to Vorpatril.

"You should tell him that," Vorpatril suggests. "It might make him snap out of it. Or break into a soliloquy."

"No, thanks," Delia says. "You do it, Ivan. You're the court jester."

"If anyone is, it's one of the town clowns," Vorpatril says. "Byerly Vorrutyer, maybe. I'm much too dignified."

"Sure," Delia says. "I'll remember that the next time I see you crawling around, too drunk to stand. The oh so very dignified Ivan Vorpatril."

"I have my dignified moments," Vorpatril insists.

 

"The Cetagandans have been noisy lately," Vorpatril is saying to Vorkosigan in an undertone when Laisa strains to hear. "Gregor might want your help with that. By which he'll mean being on the other side of the galaxy from delicate diplomatic dealings."

"One Order of Merit and they never let you live it down," Vorkosigan grumbles obliquely. What did Vorkosigan do with a Cetagandan Order of Merit? Strangle someone with it?

"And don't you forget it," Vorpatril says sternly. "Illyan's got his eye on you this time. No sneaking off for you and peaking under skirts."

"I never--" Vorkosigan starts, heated with anger.

"Yeah, yeah, I was there, Miles," Vorpatril says. "What was that haut lady's name again? Their Empress, wasn't she? That's not to mention--"

"I get the point, Ivan," Vorkosigan says, aggrieved.

 

\---

 

Galeni asks Delia to dance and she gladly accepts, more than ready to get away from Miles. He's being worse than usual; he can't seem to take his eyes off of Illyan tonight. If he's only going to stare at his commanding officer, the night is going to be very boring for him. Delia's not going to go out of her way to do it with him.

"I don't dance very well," Galeni apologizes, but she smiles at him anyway.

"You dance better than most officers," Delia tells him. Galeni went to the Academy and she knows dancing is taught there. But some officers learn better than others, Delia knows from painful experience. She has no idea what Miles's excuse is, he's had Vor social dancing from birth. Galeni really shouldn't be better than him. But Galeni also outranks him, so maybe Miles is just really bad at multiple things.

"Most?" Galeni asks. "You mean Vor, I imagine."

Delia nods. "And the connected proles," her family included. "But they have an unfair advantage. You're doing very well for someone who didn't get indoctrinated into social dancing at a young age."

"How do you know I didn't?" Galeni asks. "I'm interested as an academic and as a dancer," he elaborates. "What do you notice?"

Well, for one, Delia knows that Komarran social dancing is completely different, and she really doubts Vor social dancing was a popular hobby on Komarr when Galeni was growing up during the Revolt. 

"It's how you move," Delia says and demonstrates briefly. "It's not natural movement for you. You're much too studied. You have to learn to rely on your reflexes and muscle memory. It's like sparring. If you're looking at two people doing judo, you can tell which of them has being doing it for one year and which for ten years. If you know what you're doing, you can spot the signs of who else knows what they're doing. And if you're an expert at something, you can also tell the difference between fellow experts and those who are nearly there but not there yet, even though a novice couldn't. You know what to look for. You might not be able to vocalize what it is you're looking for, but you know it automatically when you see it. It's how you can recognize Vor. It's not just the way they look, it's the way they hold themselves, the way they walk, the way they interact with fellow Vor and with proles. If you've been recognizing it for long enough, it's just automatic. You can tell fellow Komarrans, can't you? Even if I couldn't, _you_ can, because you can recognize someone else who grew up under the domes, whereas I wouldn't know where to begin looking for the signs." 

 

\---

 

Olivia's crush on Elena Bothari had been much too obvious and tragic, but at least in its hopelessness, it had been educational. Of the four of them, Olivia always wins at combat drills. And it had taught her sisters to beware the older woman.

The older woman these days is Olivia's tragic, tragic, tragic crush on Lady Donna Vorrutyer, who, Delia has to admit, is attractive if you like the Vorishly-inbred type. All the Vorrutyers look exactly the same anyway, it's a wonder their parents ever managed to tell them apart.

Lady Donna does stand out, though, on the arm of her brother. Delia sips wine and smirks across the room at Martya as Olivia nearly faints with glee at the sight of her hopeless, hopeless, did we mention it was terribly hopeless, crush.

The Vorrutyer Count looks like Martya does after an hour of this: like he would rather be cutting off his own feet than have to stay here another minute. And Lady Donna is being completely not charming and loudly not trying to find another husband, which is going to make Olivia's inevitable heartbreak even more terrible than it usually is when her crushes inevitably do something to make Olivia decide even hopeless hoping isn't worth it.

Elena Bothari had only been the first of many heartbreaks that Olivia has brought on herself by deciding that her life simply was not tragic enough. Delia, speaking with the all the wisdom and authority that being five years older can confer, can attest to that. First Elena and then sweet Tatya Vorkeres, who even Delia had to admit wouldn't have been a tragedy for a sister-in-law, and then two or three that Delia didn't pay much attention to, being more concerned about her grades at the time, and now the object of Olivia's tragic affection is a Vor lady with three divorces and no children and no, Martya is prone to saying, _chance, you have absolutely no chance_. Olivia might have had a chance with Elena Bothari had Olivia been ten years older, and maybe with the others -- Felix, Delia fuzzily remembers through the haze of due dates, had been one serious conversation with Olivia away from proposing -- but not with Lady Donna Vorrutyer.

And that probably just makes Olivia even more stubborn about how perfect they are for each other.

Delia doesn't see it, but she doesn't see what any of her sisters see in the people they date, and good for that, because Delia is past tired of hearing snide remarks about getting four sisters for the price of one, and how interchangeable the sisters are, and all that. They don't find the same people attractive, and anyone who can't see that they're different people needs to get their head out of the Time of Isolation.

Which just goes to show you how terrible a sense of humor life happens to be, because after two weeks of Olivia's hopeless (hopeless, hopeless, _hopeless_ ) moping over a scandalous Vor lady who, okay, Delia will admit it, is actually really very gorgeous (and, no, she still doesn't go for that kind of thing, _shut up, Martya_ )... this all goes through Delia's mind as she watches Laisa Toscane cross the dance floor, Galeni escorting her with the truly understandable pride of any man who is escorting Laisa Toscane.

Delia thinks she now understands what Olivia means when she talks about crushes falling out of the sky and crushing you mercilessly.

Martya notices, of course she does, and Delia's not going to hear the end of it, probably. Delia grits her teeth. If she's going to have to suffer sisterly ridicule over this, then, damn it, it's not going to be for nothing. If she's going to suffer, she's going to suffer for a reason.

"Laisa," she says. "We barely got a chance to have a word before. I'm Delia Koudelka." _And I'm not dating Miles._

Laisa smiles at her affably. "Laisa Toscane," she says. "Nice to meet you again without the groundcar seats in the way."

Was that a compliment? Delia thinks it was! "Thank you. It's nice to meet you, too. You mentioned you worked for the Komarran Shippers Syndicate?"

Laisa nods. "Yes, for about six months now. And you? Where do you work?"

Delia thinks that might be the first time she's ever gotten a question like that at an event like this. It's certainly the first time she's gotten a question that, that _normal_ , this early in a conversation at an event like this. Usually any discussions about anything real is the conversation topic of last resort, as some officer scrapes the bottom of the barrel for something to talk about before he can plead his escape. Everyone cares more about what she looks like, or what her father's doing, than what Delia herself does.

Delia can commiserate with Miles over men cornering them and babbling at them nervously about their fathers. Because they wouldn't think of anything else to talk about. Miles is in ImpSec and so he can't talk about what he doe, and Delia's a girl, so no one wants to talk to her about what she does.

So Miles's polite society conversation is usually about Count Vorkosigan and Delia's is about Commodore Koudelka, and they both get away from the bores as soon as they can. At events like this, most of the men asking her to dance fall solidly in the category of the only thing they would ever think to talk about with a girl is her father and his rank and connections and wealth.

"I'm a post-graduate at the Agricultural and Engineering Institute, studying textile engineering," Delia says. There are usually two reactions she gets to that: total confusion or a compliment on her dress. Laisa actually looks interested, so Delia continues, "my thesis project is improving radiation suits. I'm aiming to present it before spring."

"Is it focusing on solar radiation or the --" Laisa visibly struggles to come up with the proper way to say something to a Barrayaran.

"The Cetagandan kind, mostly," Delia says. "The lab I'm working in was founded to fix the problems caused by the Cetagandan War." Her scholarship there was through Vorkosigan connections, but that's not something to discuss in polite company. But Laisa, Delia realizes joyfully, might not even realize. Laisa might look at her, like no one else does, as herself, and not as one of Commodore Koudelka's interchangeable daughters. She might not even know that Commodore Koudelka is one of Aral Vorkosigan's appendages.

 

 

"You're interesting," Laisa says, grinning, and gives Delia her comconsole code. "I'd like to continue this conversation some time."

"I would love to," Delia beams at her. She gives Laisa her code, too, but warns, "I share with my sisters, and I have three. Only two are on planet right now, Kareen on Beta Colony, but she'll be home by Midsummer." It's not even Winterfair yet. Delia knows she's getting much too far ahead of herself and doesn't care. She'd be very happy to get ahead of herself with Laisa Toscane.

 

 

And, close to midnight, Lady Donna leans towards Olivia and smiles up at her. It's a close thing, but Olivia doesn't melt through the floor in a swoon. 

There's something going on there and it's going to end up with Olivia heartbroken and crying on the couch all over again. But Delia's probably getting herself into the same situation, just with a Komarran instead of a Vor lady, so she doesn't really have room to judge her sister for her poor decision making. Not when Delia's making the exact same mistake and not regretting it for a minute.

 

\---

 

Delia stays behind as they leave, saying that she'll get a ride home with Lord Ivan and Martya.

Laisa finds herself in Duv's groundcar and invited to come see Vorkosigan House. She agrees immediately before Duv can politely decline. This is a night for firsts and for things she never would have thought would ever happen to her. This is a whirlwind of a dream and she wants to get as much out of it as she can before it vanishes into the sand, a mirage. She's been to the Imperial Residence, she's sat at the Emperor's table, she's _danced_ with the Emperor of Barrayar. And now she's being invited to Vorkosigan House. She's not going to say no to that. In the morning, she suspects she'll be struck by the danger of it all and how foolhardy it was to just rush into the situation. But she's living in the moment tonight and she'll hang on to this horse for as long as she can convince it to let her ride.

Duv also has never been to Vorkosigan House before, so it's a first for his night of firsts, too. Lord Vorkosigan leads them up the grand winding staircase, a dramatic architectural statement, Laisa remembers from her study of Barrayaran art and architecture. A grand staircase was a political statement, once upon a time. Now, it's simply a part of the scenery.

Lord Vorkosigan takes them to a parlor the size of Laisa's apartment and pulls covers off of the furniture before inviting them to sit down. Then he runs out of the room again, after calling something over his shoulder at Duv about getting something to drink.

Leaving the two of them alone.

Leaving two Komarrans alone.

Leaving two Komarrans alone _in the Butcher's home_.

Laisa stares at Duv, who stares back at her, her panic reflected in his eyes.

"Did he," she asks, taking deep breathes and forcing calm, "just leave two Komarrans alone in Admiral Vorkosigan's home?"

"Miles can be," Duv starts, then cuts himself off, his fingers pressing into the corners of his eyes to ward off a headache. "It's too long and complicated to explain. In short: yes, he did. And yes, if you explain why it's a terrible idea, he will look at you like you just kicked his pony and still not understand it. Welcome to Vorbarr Sultana."

"I see," Laisa says, because she doesn't see and this is actually terrifying, more so than the Emperor taking her for a spin on the dance floor and that had been scary _enough_. This is terrifying and Laisa never should have agreed to this in the first place. Is this some kind of frame? Is Vorkosigan going to come back up the stairs with some damning evidence, some kind of crime that's been committed and look, here are the Komarrans still sitting around in near-dark at the scene of the crime, clearly guilty.

Laisa stares out the open door, watching carefully for Lord Vorkosigan's return and dreading it. She's gripping Duv's hand tightly, even as he repeats, over and over again, sounding very _nearly_ positive, that Vorkosigan didn't mean anything by this, it's just how he is, how this planet is. The Vor don't consider Komarrans _that_ kind of threat in their own homes.

Vorkosigan eventually returns, and Laisa grabs her hand back from Duv's. But Vorkosigan is carrying only wine and wineglasses and seems not to notice the tension in the room.

Or maybe he does, because he goes directly to trying to diffuse it by asking Laisa about her work with the Komarran Shippers Syndicate, and the entire conversation is about that and about high-level discussions about Komarran and Barrayaran trade. There are no ImpSec undertones, for all that Duv outranks Miles in the military, and Miles outranks Duv otherwise to such an extent that it's laughable.

When the conversation comes around to the topic of collaborators, because Vorkosigan is a Vor if nothing else and the Vor have no tact, Vorkosigan outright objects to calling her a collaborator, but it's meant as a compliment, that they cooperate instead of collaborate, and Laisa smiles through it, because she's been called worse. Duv, who Vorkosigan implies is really a collaborator, diverts him off on a different topic before Laisa can think too much of someone who cavalierly discusses Komarran social distinctions after knowing someone all of one night.

They finally leave Vorkosigan House an hour after midnight, and Duv takes the long way back to Laisa's apartment.

"It means something different here, collaborator," Duv says, breaking the silence. They pass two more streets of Laisa saying absolutely nothing before Duv elaborates, "they have weird ways of talking about loyalty and breaking faith. They're Vor. It's different."

"I know I'm a collaborator," Laisa says, "I'm on this planet, aren't I?" It's not cooperation when the invader has a weapon pointed at you. It's not cooperation when you decide to work with the invader instead of against them.

"The Vor have different ideas," Duv explains inadequately, and kisses her good night at her door. Laisa turns to watch him drive away before heading up to her apartment. It's late and she still has to write home and let Aunt Anna know how to vote with her shares in the upcoming Solstice municipal elections. There are a couple of ballot initiatives she really has to read over carefully and decide on, and it wouldn't do to have her distracted by thoughts of tonight. Of the Imperial Residence, of the Emperor, of Duv, of Delia, of Lord Vorkosigan.

It's time to think about _important_ things, she tells herself, and settles down with the sample ballot.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning dawns bright and early. Laisa groans as she hears Joanna's door open. She follows Joanna's footsteps into the kitchen and as Joanna rummages through the kitchen drawers and starts coffee and breakfast.

Laisa has managed to get herself up onto her elbows by the time Joanna comes into her bedroom bearing coffee for herself and some sweet-smelling tea for Laisa.

"Hung over?" Joanna asks brightly and hands the tea to Laisa, who has succeeded in getting herself into a sitting position.

Laisa pushes her hair out of her face with her free hand. Then she sips the tea and takes a moment to happily savor it. "Thank you, you're an angel," she says to Joanna. "And, no, I'm not hung over."

"But it was a late night," Joanna guesses correctly. "You know it's nearly noon? I thought you'd at least have checked your mail already. But you haven't."

"How do you know?" Laisa asks. "I could have and then gone back to bed."

"You'd have woken me up and shrieked at me," Joanna says. "Have you _seen_ what the consortium has been sending out the last few days?"

"Yes, something about some merger," Laisa says and takes another wonderful sip of the wonderful tea. It's from her precious supply of her tea from home and she can't blame Joanna at all for digging it out. Today deserves a taste of home. After what happened last night, she needs home. "And I did check my mail when I got in. I sent off my ballot for the municipals and the shareholder meeting to Aunt Anna before I went to sleep. I only skimmed her letter about the merger. It seemed normal, for Aunt Anna."

"Yes, well, _Aunt Anna_ ," Joanna starts triumphantly and then dissolves into giggles when Laisa makes a face at her. "Your aunt's a pirate, Laisa. You must learn to live with it."

"I live with it all the time," Laisa grumbles and makes another face. "She's going to send me another letter gloating about it. Just you wait. And my parents are going to send one telling me that the Kozanis aren't speaking with them this month except across a boardroom table because Aunt Anna just bought out their fleet beneath them."

"I'm talking to you," Joanna says helpfully. "Although what _the_ Kozanis would say about that, I couldn't begin to guess."

"It's too early in the morning for me to apologize for that," Laisa says, then follows it up with a sheepish, "sorry." She knows better than everyone about how family trade group positions don't always reflect individual feelings. She finishes the tea and Joanna looks benevolently down at her.

Joanna's family control their own trade conglomerate for now, but that's going to fall apart if they keep letting people like Aunt Anna go after their child companies. Aunt Anna really is a pirate. Laisa's glad she's on her side. If not, she'd have to spend all of her time defending her holdings from Aunt Anna and her hunger for acquiring shiny new things.

"I'll let it go this time," she says, "because you're obviously not in your right mind. That's understandable and acceptable. You went to the _Imperial Residence_ last night."

"And lived to tell the tale," Laisa adds, not that sarcastically. The fear's more than understandable. "Yes. And then briefly to Vorkosigan House after that."

Joanna's mouth drops open. "Vorkosigan House."

"Didn't I mention? Duv got the invitation through Lord Vorkosigan. They've served together. Lord Vorkosigan brought us back to Vorkosigan House after that. I think he wanted to impress Duv or something. Wave some Vor shininess in his face and prove what kinds of favors he could keep doing for him." Laisa doesn't know if it worked or not. Duv had seemed as scared by it all as Laisa had. But maybe thrilled, too? Laisa doesn't know. She supposes she could ask him, but that might be prying too far. Duv doesn't talk about his career and everything political on Barrayar could potentially hurt, damage, or destroy his career, and there's nothing more political than a Vorkosigan.

"Well, that's frankly terrifying," Joanna says. "What was it like?"

"Frankly terrifying," Laisa says. "But quiet. He said he's just back from some galactic duty and the Admiral and the Countess are on Sergyar right now, so there wasn't anyone there. No family, no servants, no armsmen. I thought the Vor had armsmen following them around all the time. But there was no one there but a guard by the gate." And a good thing, too, Laisa belatedly realizes. If there had been more people, it would have been that much more terrifying. "Good thing there weren't guards," Laisa continues. "Can you imagine being in Vorkosigan House while surrounded by Vorkosigan armsmen carrying weapons? You wouldn't want to turn your back on anything."

"I'd never go in there to begin with," Joanna says.

"You're wiser than me," Laisa says ruefully. "I thought I wanted to see it, and then I nearly had a heart attack because of something that Duv assured me was just unthinking Vor arrogance. I don't think I'd go a second time." There had been a lot of Vor arrogance last night. Vorkosigan had talked to her like she was his confidant, had told her things about the Emperor that no one else would ever tell a Komarran. And the way he had spoken about Komarr itself... well, he's the Butcher's son and heir. She wouldn't have expected better from him.

If that's how he talks to her, she wonders how he talks to Galeni. But Galeni's probably used to it. Galeni's served with the Vor and with Vorkosigan. He might not even notice it anymore. It might just be the background radiation of his universe.

"So it was bad," Joanna says.

"He told me I wasn't a collaborator." Laisa shrugs. In the sober light of morning, it's not as terrifying as it was last night. It's only very, very strange. And not an experience she's keen to repeat. "He only counted collaborators as people who worked with the Barrayarans before they invaded." The people who'd seen the Barrayaran invasion coming and had helped anyway. Traitors, not collaborators, but then again, this was Vorkosigan.

Plenty of Komarrans worked with Barrayarans individually before the invasion, and the governments had worked together. Plenty of Komarrans had settled on Barrayar in the time between contact and conquest. It had taken Barrayaran action to make them have to choose. It had taken Barrayaran action to make them collaborators. It had been Barrayarans who forced the choice. Barrayarans who invaded, Barrayarans who forced Komarr to surrender on terms. Barrayarans who committed the massacre.

"Maybe I'd call them spies, the ones who helped Barrayar before the conquest," Joanna says. "Except we're on Barrayar, so we probably shouldn't call them anything at all."

"You're probably right," Laisa says. There are things that are too dangerous to say even on Komarr, and they aren't on Komarr. Vorkosigan had clearly understood that collaboration was an insult and hadn't wanted to insult his guests. But Vorkosigan had thought that the conquest ended after the massacre. Laisa doesn't want to know what he thought the Revolt was, or what Vorkosigan thought the occupying forces had done. They've withdrawn from most of the domes, but ImpSec Komarr still operates as before.

"Now, if Barrayar had come to us as we are and proposed a merger, instead of coming to us as they are, with warships...," Joanna shrugs. "The worst thing we lost in the massacre is any hope of that, any hope of seeing the Barrayarans as partners instead of conquerors."

"I suppose they don't think of anyone like that," Laisa says. "You know their history. As soon as they stopped having their own wars, they looked to us and then to Escobar. They don't see anyone as a long-term partner. It's always about war. They have a warrior caste, they need wars to keep themselves happy. They're not going to stop."

Unless someone blows the wormhole up behind them, but Laisa's not one of _those_. If she were, she wouldn't be on this side of the wormhole in the first place. And if she really couldn't have worked with Barrayarans, she'd have left Komarr on one of her trade fleets like her uncles had. But she's not like that.

She wants to help Komarr as it is, not in some idealistic way that would blow up the domes. Spending time with Duv, sometimes she idly thinks she'd like to span the gap between Duv and his father. She would never agree with what Richard Galen did, but she'd also never do what Duv did. She'd never change her name and pretend to be the invader. Duv never collaborated; he _assimilated_. When he turned his back on Komarr, he turned it all the way.

And being Laisa Toscane means working with Barrayar and that means keeping the trade fleets in the sky and if that means Laisa Toscane is a collaborator to those at home, the ones who would never cross this wormhole, then that's the bargain she made and she knew she was making it. Komarrans don't see much of a difference between supporting Barrayar and collaborating with it. Laisa's never felt the need to split hairs. She works with them, she accepts their rule. She's a collaborator and she knows it.

Komarr as a planet is nothing without the trade fleets, is nothing without all of the external resources they can bring in piece by piece, ship by ship. Barrayar's slowed down the terraforming, too scared of what might happen if Komarrans could live outside the domes. They know their own history of guerrilla warfare too well. Komarrans have to work with, and work against, Barrayar at every step to save their own planet.

It took Barrayar coming for Komarrans to see the planet beneath their feet for what it was. It took Barrayar for Komarrans to see Komarr at all. But Komarr is what they're left with. Komarr can't survive without the wormholes, but Barrayar controls those. The only thing Komarr has left is the dirt, but they can't live on it. You can't eat your own pride; you'll starve trying to live on Komarr as it is. They grow as much as they can. Laisa has all the facts and figures to tell her that it's not enough. If they can't get rid of Barrayar -- and they can't -- then they have to work with Barrayar. 

But they don't have to become Barrayar. And Barrayar both wants and doesn't want Komarr to become like them.

 

"Komarr's problem--"

"Komarr's _problem_ ," Laisa interrupts, "was that we were too busy thinking of ourselves as a corporation to do much thinking about ourselves as a planet. We figured planetary identity, all that, that could wait. We could put our time in tending to the terraforming, our feet in the ground, while we stayed perched in the air along our wormholes, never feeling too connected to Komarr itself because we never went out there. It took the Barrayarans conquering us for us to realize we weren't a planet, we were an archipelago. A central archipelago, with good relationships with the neighbors, but that didn't, that couldn't, stop the Barrayarans from stranding us."

"And now they're strangling us so that we can't," Joanna says.

That's not usually the sort of thing said by people who have happily lived on Barrayar as long as Joanna has, but Laisa doesn't disagree with her. That's part of the problem. Being on Barrayar gives you more insight into Barrayarans. You can live here and still see them true. It's one of the trade-offs. Every Komarran has to make them, has to find their own balance. And that balance shifts all the time. You're always having to find a new center.

"Our value is our wormholes, not the planet, and we're trapped in the domes. We could isolate and barricade them from the galaxy without them ever starving to death. They don't rely on trade to survive. We do. They don't understand what they did to us. And they think we're cowards for not fighting a guerrilla war that we never could have fought with our terrain." Joanna shakes her head. "I'm getting tired of being here sometimes, Laisa."

"You're the one who convinced me the most to come here," Laisa says. She hasn't needed much convincing; she'd been too drawn by the idea of seeing Barrayar in person, of being able to live there and see and experience all of it. But she'd known the cost it would come with.

But knowing the cost and living it are two different things.

"I don't regret being here," Joanna says. "I like it here. I like living on a planet and not inside a terrarium. But Barrayar comes with Barrayarans and sometimes, Laisa, they're just exhausting. You can't tell me they're not. You and Duv Galeni got dragged to the Butcher's house by his son. I don't like Galeni, but even I don't think he deserves having to walk into that place. His aunt died in the Massacre!"

"Galeni wasn't protesting it," Laisa says. And neither had she. She'd been too caught up in the adventure of it, too caught up in the magic of the night. It hadn't caught up to her until the young Vorkosigan had left them alone. And then the last forty years had fallen down on top of her like a wormhole jump to hell. "I'd thought it would be fun. You know how I am. I just got caught up too much into what I am and forgot. And then I was in the Butcher's house, alone, with Duv. I've never been more scared in my life, not even when the Endeavor was two weeks late when my parents were aboard."

Joanna hugs her.

 

"I wouldn't blow up the wormhole, I'm not one of _those_. If I were, I wouldn't be on this side of the wormhole. And we couldn't go back to that uneasy detente we had beforehand. I'd give the Barrayarans control of their wormhole, it leads only to them anyway. And I'd let them buy the one to Rho Ceta off of us. They get two wormholes for their paranoia, we get the other four for our survival and the ones that go nowhere for our curiosity. It would hurt trade with Cetaganda, but both sides can re-route."

"I'm sure them re-routing is what Barrayar's afraid of," Joanna says.

"Barrayar's afraid of shadows," Laisa says. Sometimes literally, she's heard stories. "Let them keep half their fleet just beyond the first wormhole, let them destroy their own interstellar front door. I wish I didn't have to care what they do with their paranoia. They could have negotiated wormhole rights with us, but they didn't. They wanted a tax base, so they took our planet, but then they turn around and pretend it's about Cetaganda. It's not. Wormhole paranoia, maybe. But they don't care about Komarr itself. They just want our money, and they call us names, say that we accepted a _bribe_. Komarr's all about money to them. The wormholes are security, the planet's a money purse."

"I know," Joanna sighs. "They call us mercenary, but they're the ones who made it about money. I suppose they can't think of any other reason why a major through-way would actually let people through. They'd have forgiven us if the Cetagandans properly conquered us. But they can't handle that their security wasn't foremost in our mind. They can't accept that they weren't more important to us than our own interests."

"They had to call it revenge," Laisa says. "I'm sure they told themselves that using us as a tax base was a way to sell it to the accountants. I might even have believed them, but then they showed their hand when they invaded Escobar. _That_ wasn't any kind of revenge. That was the Vor loving war."

 

"You met the Emperor?"

Laisa smiles despite herself. Somehow the Emperor had been one of the more _pleasant_ terrifying aspects of last night. "He was polite and charming." But surrounded by guards even in his own home, and from the way everyone else had treated it, the guards hadn't been just because of the Komarrans in the room. Barrayaran paranoia at work, she imagines.

 

And then there had been the Emperor. Laisa had been surprised to like him, but she had. She'd enjoyed dancing with him, even though she rather thought the number of times had to do more with the small number of guests than any real preference on the Emperor's behalf. But he'd been witty and charming and reminded Laisa of everything romantic she'd ever thought about Barrayar.

And maybe if he hadn't been her Emperor, she could have forgotten everything else. She's managed to forget a lot about Duv, but that's on purpose. She likes Duv. And she likes the Emperor, but Duv's... it's different with Duv. The Emperor commands ImpSec. The Emperor commands the Imperial Navy. The Emperor was a child like Laisa during the Komarran Revolt, but he's still the man who holds Komarr, who won't ever let them go.

Laisa's made her peace with Barrayar. She even likes Barrayar. But she's not sure she can extend that to the Emperor. Not to the man with absolute authority over her home.

She'd instinctively treated him like anyone she'd meet over a board room table. But that had been the Komarran Senate's problem, too: treating the Barrayarans like something normal, like something understandable. They hadn't understood they had to start playing by different rules.

They'd let their guard down. They'd surrendered. And they were massacred for it.

Laisa hadn't let her guard down around the Emperor. She'd treated him like someone normal, because that's what the training is for; she'd be terrible at her job if she would let fear get in the way. And she'd liked him. But there's liking him and there's seeing him as someone he's not. She's not going to do that. He's charming because he's been trained to be charming, the same way Laisa's been trained to be professional. And maybe he had even liked her; you don't dance with someone four times because you hate them. But... but it was still the Emperor. It was a thrill. It was dangerous. But it was fine. It's not like she's ever going to do it again. It was an experience and one she'll have for the rest of her life, that one night, she danced with the Emperor of Barrayar.

 

Laisa knows there are Komarrans who refuse to bow to the Emperor, claiming that he's not _their_ sovereign. She's not one of those. There are certain things that are part of the Barrayaran conquest, some of them more painful than others. Showing subservience to the Emperor is lip-service, at worse. At best, it's flattery. The Barrayarans mean something by it, something very feudal, but while Laisa thinks that all very romantic in stories, it's just a detail of her life. It doesn't hurt her pride or anything like that. She doesn't think anything of it at all. It costs her nothing. They've all had to do worse things, accept worse fates, than giving the Emperor the respect he expects inside his Empire.

And she'll likely never see him again.

 

\---

 

The next day, Delia drops by the Residence for morning tea with Lady Alys, ostensibly a chance for a friendly biscuit and update on how her family is doing.

And after five minutes, Lady Alys says, "enough of that, what did you think about last night?"

Delia sips from her tea cup as she reports. She used to give it all out in a long ramble, tripping over her words in her eagerness to show off, to see if she did well, to meet the challenge and desperate to know how she did on the test. Lady Alys taught her to slow down, to treat it like something normal. This isn't a subordinate reporting to her superior officer. No, it's one woman having a pleasant, friendly discussion with another. There's nothing suspicious here at all. It's just women talking. It's perfectly safe and harmless.

Delia receives a rare smile from Lady Alys and then, just to keep her from getting too confident, Lady Alys asks, "what did you think of that Toscane woman?"

Delia does not freeze or flinch or anything of that sort. She keeps breathing evenly. She takes a delicate sip of her tea. "I think she's smarter than she is beautiful, Lady Alys."

"Yes, you would," Lady Alys says, not disapprovingly, but, well, she knows all about how Delia is not actually dating Lord Ivan, public appearances to the contrary, and if there's one thing Lord Ivan is, it's more beautiful than he is smart. "Gregor enjoyed her company as well."

"She isn't afraid of him," Delia offers, although she thinks that Laisa probably was _terrified_ \-- she's obviously smart enough to be intimidated, so she was probably always smart enough to be sensibly afraid -- but did a great job of hiding it. A Komarran woman meeting the Emperor on extremely short notice? Delia would bet good money that Laisa was scared. And she still hadn't let any of it show. That's Delia's kind of woman.

"She... impressed him," Lady Alys says. She's not quite frowning, but in any other person, Delia would say she was. "Few people lobby him directly about Komarran civil affairs."

Probably no one lobbies Gregor to his face about Komarran civil affairs. Just the military ones. "She works for the Komarran Shippers Syndicate," Delia says, which studiously avoids making a value judgment on Lady Alys's pointed pause. Lady Alys's generation is always a little weird about Komarr. "Her specialty is optimizing trade routes, I think."

"Gregor was impressed with her metaphors," Lady Alys says. "He would like her to present her views and opinions, meaning, that is, those of her trade group, to Prime Minister Racozy and his staff. There will be a luncheon meeting next week that's at an opportune time. How do you think Doctor Toscane will react to that?"

Delia hasn't known her long enough to really make that kind of assessment. "She seemed pretty confident last night." Laisa's probably the type who is well-trained and well-prepared enough to always seem confident in her area of expertise, no matter what's going on. At some point, Delia knows, you can just shut your brain off and let your mouth do the talking, and then you look up and it's been an hour and you don't know exactly what you said, but people seem impressed, so probably you did something right. It just takes a lot of training and repetition to get that far. Delia can do it while making small talk with officers. It only makes sense that Laisa can do it while talking to anyone. They've probably both had similar amounts of training for that.

Lady Alys nods. "Then I'll pass that along to Racozy's secretary."

 

Delia wonders what someone like Laisa does for fun. Sophisticated, urban Laisa Toscane. A cultured Komarran. Someone who probably is not amused by some of the stranger exploits of Delia's friends. Someone who might like avant-garde theater or the stranger things going on the caravanserai.

What do they even do on Komarr for fun? Delia doesn't know. She's never been off-planet.

Delia tells herself to stop overthinking this. Laisa's her age or nearly, probably. Probably a little older because Komarrans don't age as quickly and Laisa has a doctorate and probably more experience than Delia knows. But that doesn't mean that she can't like the kinds of things that Delia likes.

Stupid, she tells herself. You could, you know, just ask her. She gave you her number. You should call and ask if she wants to do something and then take it from there. You could act like this is normal and just call her.

So she does.

 

\---

 

Laisa welcomes the call from Delia with nothing short of glee. Delia had been one of the few _pleasantly_ interesting things last night. So much had been overwhelming or scary or borderline scary-overwhelming. Delia had been a breath of fresh air. She had been charming and funny and fitting right in, but not in any terrifying way. She had just fit in like she belonged there, but without any air of the Vor around her.

Well, she's not Vor, Laisa knows. But that doesn't stop some from imitating the Vorish air, like it's something that's in any way attractive.

But maybe it is here, Laisa wonders. Back home it certainly wouldn't be. Among Komarrans, she adds belatedly. She's never wondered what traits Barrayarans on Komarr value in their compatriots while on Komarr. Maybe being Vor is always a good thing to other Barrayarans.

But she doubts it. The Vor are too much the elevated class, even here. Having Vor in front of your name still means something. You could be someone who can't tell a dome from a hole in the ground, but if you're Vor, that doesn't matter. Vor is Vor and you can go jump into a collapsing wormhole if you think it doesn't matter, because it does. Some people pretend it doesn't, but they're just pretending and hoping reality will decide to conform to their illusions. It doesn't actually negate the power. Quite the opposite, Laisa thinks. By treating it like it's air, they're treating it like it's a fact of nature, which it isn't. It's a fact of prejudice.

But Delia hadn't been like that and she'd been wonderful. Laisa's been looking forward to talking to her again. She's never had any Barrayaran friends and she's hoping Delia could be her first.

Delia is as beautiful the next day, but more real. She seems softer in normal clothes and not dressed to wait on the Emperor.

"Hello, Laisa," she says. She's sitting behind a desk and out of the window behind her, Laisa can see a residential area closer to the center of the city. She must live very near the Vorkosigans, Laisa realizes.

"Hi, Delia," Laisa says. "How are you?"

Delia twirls a strand of hair around her finger. "I was wonder if you'd like to get something to eat," Delia says. "Uh, together, with me. I'd love to get to know you better. Maybe show you around. Have you seen much of Barrayar while you've been here? I can be an native guide. Barrayar's got a lot of things to see. We could do that. Go see the sights, take in the scenery."

"I'd like that," Laisa says. "Why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow? We could strategize about what you think I should see first and prioritize the rest."

"Sure," Delia says. She smiles gently. "I'd like that. Would you like me to bring anything? There's some great little restaurants I'd love to show you. Small, out of the way... intimate, even."

 

\---

 

Blue goes best with Delia's complexion. Cool colors suit her, and she would love to wear gray, because of how well it goes with half of the clothes in her closet and how well it looks on her, but she can't wear it to anything fancy or important. Steel gray and blue gray and all its beautiful shades have to settle for Delia wearing them to class or out with friends or anything casual and friendly. It's not appropriate for high society, not a mourning color.

Today, she selects a soft gray sweater to wear to the library and then to meet with her adviser.

 

There's damage on her favorite coat. Delia stares at it for a long time, as if staring will make it go away. She sighs and consigns it to the beyond-me bin, where all clothes go when they need an expert's attention. Were she Tante Cordelia, she could just hand this off to an armsman or valet to deal with. Delia's not that lucky.

She suffers for fashion whenever necessary, but the biggest suffering is the cost of looking like a rich Vor lady when she's really a middle-class prole with ambitions -- Olivia would say delusions -- of grandeur.

She hunts through the rest of her closet for something that might impress Laisa. Delia's taste is impeccable. Her wardrobe is on a budget.

 

It reminds Delia of being eleven and going for the first time to a Betan Market co-organized by _their_ leading trading syndicate and by Tante Cordelia, where Delia had discovered types of clothes that she hadn't realized existed before, or that were anything that she could wear.

She'd bought some Betan trousers, sized just a little too large, but had grown into them within the year.

But the big find had been a Betan sarong, and she's bought more of them over the years. Delia uses it as an outer layer sometimes to the university. It looks very fashionable dressed up with the right earrings and shawl. She likes the color effects and half the time, you can't even tell what it was originally meant to be.

She'll use that, she thinks. She'll use that make Laisa think that Delia's an appropriate girlfriend, someone who can mix galactic fashions, someone who isn't stuck to Barrayaran clothes and Barrayaran ways of doing things. Laisa's come to Barrayar so she must have known what to expect, but surely someone who wears Komarran fashions to the Imperial Residence must appreciate some break from the constraints of truly Barrayaran clothing. Delia can bring the galaxy into her wardrobe. Maybe it will help bring the galaxy into her bedroom.

 

Martya and Olivia are mostly fighting about the obvious, which is how angry Martya is that she wasn't born from a uterine replicator, too. It gives Olivia -- and Kareen, of course, but Kareen's not here to be a target of jealous, so it's all on Olivia -- a completely unfair advantage in everything. Olivia was gene cleaned and came out of a nice, safe replicator where everything was monitored and controlled. It may not have been as advanced as the technology on Beta Colony at the time, but it was as close as Tante Cordelia could make it.

Olivia had been born with those advantages. And Martya, a year older, hadn't. Martya finds that deeply, terribly unfair. There's nothing that can be done about it now, but Martya's always ready, willing, and able to pick a sisterly fight over it, or try to get Olivia and Kareen to do her chores for her because after all, they're genetically superior. They've got all the good genes, and Martya didn't.

Delia thinks she's overreacting, honestly. But she does see the point to it some days. Like today, when she's in the throes of a desperate crush on a Komarran woman and deluding herself by dreaming up some happily ever after, while the cold reality is that Laisa's life expectancy is easily three times the length of Delia's. Certain things are just not fair.

Martya is the sort of person who not-accidentally slams her heel into the foot of a dancing partner who just told her that he will expect his wife to body birth all of his children. And in that, Olivia and Kareen both enthusiastically agree with her. Delia's the odd sister out. It's not that she disagrees in theory, but she's not sure that kind of pointed violence is in any way helpful. It's only going to reinforce that asshole's prejudices about women; they shouldn't play into them. And then Olivia starts to lecture her and then where has the night gone? To arguments they've had a million times already. There's no point.

But that's one of the trials and tribulations of being the oldest. You're the wisest and, like Cassandra, nobody ever listens to you. Even when you're right. _Especially_ when you're right.

So not fair.

And, anyway, Martya's had her victory. They've all but won the uterine replicator debate. It was waged in drawing rooms and across dinner tables and now the babas won't even deal for someone who won't bow their head to the inevitability of uterine replicators.

Now the big fight is the issue of when. There's only so much they can do to clean genes. It's like cooking. It matters what you start with. It's important to know if you're compatible. And some think it should be done before any emotions are involved. Do it early, get it over with, while there's still time to break it off if you have to without hearts getting broken.

Delia thinks that's a too unrealistic, not to mention cynical, view of how emotional bonds are formed, and she is never going to ask Lady Alys why she thought that could ever work, Lady Alys is too Vor for that. Delia thinks it's more like, if you do it early, you then have time to make a decision if it _matters_. It doesn't have to matter. But if you have the information, then you can make the choice if you want to do anything. You can't do that if you don't know. 

And finding out that your gene scan is filthy might be better done after you get married. Everyone's heard of a friend of a friend's cousin whose betrothal was broken because they found out they were a mutant. If you're already married, there's less that can be done about it. You deal with your reality and you suck it up and you find ways around it and you probably don't ever talk about it. Which means nothing's going to get better, in Martya's view, but Delia thinks that it's not that fragile. It can take a lot of silence and still move towards the better. Just look at the last twenty years. If that's not proof enough, Delia doesn't know what is.

 

You can only select with the genes available, so it's helpful to know, Delia thinks. She'd always want to know. She doesn't know if she'd be the type to do it before even starting dating someone, since that seems to be getting far too ahead of things, but maybe once you're already starting to talk about children, that might be too late. But she'd certainly want to know before she decided to have children with someone.

But even if you're not compatible, you could always pull in some genetic material from a clean donor and never tell anyone. Delia doesn't know how often that happens, but it's probably a lot. She'd do it.

But that's one more advantage of dating a Komarran. All of them have clean gene scans. Even the ones from body births were gene cleaned before being implanted. They probably don't care about this at all. Even if Delia were a mutant, which she's not, Laisa might not even care. Because why would it matter? Laisa's a Komarran. She doesn't have the cultural baggage that Barrayarans do.

Delia hasn't even started dating Laisa, but she's already realizing why so many Barrayaran woman go to Komarr and then don't come home. It probably removes so much stress and worry. Why stay home, where this is a problem, when you can go somewhere where it isn't?

 

\---

 

Delia brings over a side dish from a restaurant that serves greekie back-country food straight from Vorloupulous's District. It's a pure Barrayaran experience, she says, that has to be experienced, it cannot be explained.

Laisa nods, willing to trust Delia on this, and learns that was the right thing to do when the first bite she takes, she has to gulp down some water. "This is strong," she says, sputtering. "Good... but very strong."

"It can get worse," Delia says, grinning. "Much worse. There's some native Barrayaran seasoning on here. Nothing from any of the poisonous families, but it's got that kick, doesn't it? Supposedly the colonists didn't believe it wasn't really poisonous because it tasted like it should be. It wasn't until we got good toxicology labs that most people were willing to eat it. This version's gone through the Imperial Science Institute just to make absolutely sure it won't poison you. I think they still never let Emperor Ezar eat it."

Laisa finds herself taking another bite. It's like if cinnamon punched you in the kidneys and then kissed it better.

Delia snickers. "Yeah. It gets you. At first you wonder why you put it into your mouth and then it's suddenly the only thing on the table you want to eat. I swear by it for exam week. It's gotten me through a lot. Half the time, it doesn't even make me cry anymore."

 

\---

 

Da comes home and immediately changes out of his uniform and into a nice suit. Mama makes it home a few minutes later, out of breath and already divesting herself of her coat and gloves.

For some reason, Da and Mama celebrate their anniversary a few days before the anniversary of the beginning of the Pretendership, not on the day they met, which must have been at least a month before, or on their wedding day, which has been, for as long as Delia can remember, all about Gregor (Mama) and the Winterfair ball (Mama) and the Winterfair Review (Da).

Delia's not sure how they came up with this date, but she guesses it must have been a notable day in the bustle of the earliest days of the Regency when _nothing_ happened. That would be something worth celebrating and commemorating year after year, right? That's the only reason she can think of for why her parents chose some random day a couple weeks before Miles's birthday as their anniversary.

Mama and Da rarely talk about those days anyway. Da can occasionally be convinced to talk about his time on Sergyar with the Lord Regent before the war, back in the days when Da's career had been essentially over and he'd been stuck out in a nowhere fleet to serve out the rest of his time because it wasn't worth the time and expense of court-martialing him or just drumming him out. Da mostly talks about that with young officers who've messed up, but each of his daughters got the talk, too, after they'd done something awful and terrible and had been crying about it, and had been _five_. The point is, Da talks about it in the most general of terms, not the specifics.

And Da never discusses, ever, how he got hurt, and he'll say that he got onto the Regent's Staff because of nepotism, but no one can say that he didn't work sweat, blood, and tears for every promotion after that.

Mama, on the other hand, talks about how she got onto Princess Kareen's bodyguard detail all the time to anyone who asks. It's not only a major point of pride, it's the reason that Tante Cordelia could have female guards without too much of a fight, because Mama had already broken that ground and shown that a female bodyguard can be successful and a good idea. It was Princess Kareen's idea, Mama will always say, but it was Mama who was the first one and who showed that it could work, and so Delia doesn't think it's a bad thing at all that Mama gets a lot of the credit for it. She deserves it.

Mama had grown up in a family with all brothers, so Delia figures that's part of the reason, along with the cold-blooded, almost Vor, really, plan to ensure that her children could marry Vor if they wanted to. Mama wanted a bunch of girls, and that just happened to dovetail nicely with Tante Cordelia's plans for the future, so that worked out nicely. And Da hadn't had any siblings, and Grandma Koudelka has always doted over her granddaughters, and Delia's never heard her suggest to Da and Mama that they should have a boy, too.

Mama had fought her way to the top and gotten herself a spot on the Princess's bodyguard roster and she had been her closest bodyguard, practically her armsman, for years. Someone had to be first, and it was Mama. That means something. That's important. Her mama's a trendsetter and a revolutionary, as much as Tante Cordelia is in her public ways, and Lady Alys is in her private ways. In front of the scenes or behind the scenes, Delia's been surrounded by women who were changing the world. Of course she wants to be one of them. Of course she sees no reason why she shouldn't be. It's her job as a Koudelka. It's like the Vor, but if they wanted to stretch the status quo to the breaking point, instead of walking around on eggshells in case a loud noise made the whole thing come crashing down.

 

Laisa comes from a world where these fights weren't even things people thought were issues. Female bodyguards? Komarr had full gender equality. Beta had women _generals_ , not just women soldiers. They put women in command and thought nothing of it. Even Cetaganda has more than Barrayar does when it comes to these things.

And meanwhile, on Barrayar, Delia gets stuck dancing with men who think that she's nothing more than a rather pretty extension of her father, like she has no existence on her own. That these types of men also tend to think that her father has no existence outside of being one of Aral Vorkosigan's proteges only makes the point all the more absurd. How long is it going to take before Barrayaran men look at her and see Delia Koudelka and not just another extension of some Vor lord?

Much too long, she usually thinks glumly, when she's in moods like this. Maybe never, not until all of the men like that die.

But that's not being fair. Things have gotten so much better, even in her own lifetime. When she was born, her going to the same prep schools as Vor heiresses would have been unheard of. But there Delia had been, her first day of school, and no one had looked at her askance or made her think in any way that she didn't belong there or wasn't welcome there.

That would have been laughable when Mama was growing up. No one would have ever believed it could have happened. But it did and it wasn't strange, and that was the important bit. That things can change that quickly and utterly, so that what would have been a joke when Mama was Delia's age had been Delia's reality without her having to fight for it herself, because other people had already won those fights on her behalf so thoroughly that it was sometimes strange to think that they had ever needed to be fought at all.

Delia wonders if that's what it must have been like to grow up on Komarr, with all of its freedoms and liberties, and then to come to Barrayar. To suddenly realize that there are fights that were won a long time ago that are still being fought and have yet to be fought.

Tante Cordelia says that was why Prince Xav's wife had come back to Barrayar with him. Because that's a Betan thing. To see all the ways things have gone to crap in the past and to then take any opportunity to maybe make it go better this time. Betans learn from history and try not to repeat it.

Unlike the Vor, Delia thinks, who positively relish repeating their history. There's nothing like they better.

 

\---

 

Some Barrayarans seem to think that living in domes means that Komarrans don't notice the weather, that it's not important. Back home, Laisa had always been slightly offended at that. Of course they notice the weather. Of course they think it's important.

It's not until she gets to Barrayar that she understands what they really mean by it. Barrayarans mean that, if it's a windy day, Komarrans notice the wind, but it doesn't affect them. They aren't, say, nearly blown into a lamppost because of a strong gust. It doesn't make rain fall sideways and stymie all attempts at remaining dry. Barrayarans live in their weather while Komarrans just live beneath it.

Laisa's getting that lesson ground into her bones today. She resolves that when she gets home, when a Barrayaran scoffs at how coddled the Komarrans are by their domes, how they don't know what real weather is like, Laisa will nod understandingly and not argue the point about what strong weather can do to delicate scientific experiments and measurements.

Today it's pouring. Rain is coming down in thick drops, splattering loudly against the windows. It's too irregular to sound like drum beats, which is how Laisa, when she was young, imagined outdoor rain to have to sound like. Something regular and familiar and thrumming. Real rain isn't like that at all. It's more elegant. It's more messy. It's more real. It's definitely a lot more wet. It's another thing Komarrans just don't understand about weather and Laisa, even though it's raining on her plans, is enjoying the lesson immensely.

She sits by her window and watches the rain fall steadily on the streets outside. People rush every which way, trying to convince reality that if they just move faster, they won't get wet. It's a peculiar delusion, but one Laisa picked up immediately the first time she was caught out in a rain storm. It doesn't work, but, oh, how you wish it did and how you wish that wishing could make it so.

 

Laisa's an incurable romantic. And the problem with incurable romanticism, she thinks, staring forlornly at the pouring rain, is that she knows she should be taking this as a sign. It's raining and she's supposed to be going out on a first date. This is a terrible omen. She should stay inside and stay dry and possibly get drunk and watch terrible holovids about people who have suspiciously simple problems that can go away with one kiss and maybe a tearful heart-to-heart under the rain. That's another thing the rain would be good for. She should find someone she's in a stupid misunderstanding with and drag it all out under the pouring rain and then the rain would stop.

Unfortunately, Laisa's life is not a terrible holovid. And she's been on this planet too long that rain has become a nuisance to her social life. 

Delia, having been on this planet much longer, simply calls and suggests an indoor activity instead. Which turns out to be coming over and laughing at Laisa's terrible taste in holovids and then watching one of them. 

 

 

"I'd like to visit Komarr," Delia says.

Laisa smiles at her. "I think you'd like it there." Enough Barrayaran woman go to Komarr and never leave for Laisa to have put together something of a profile of the type that fall in love with Komarr, or, rather, Komarran freedoms, and never want to go home that she thinks Delia might be one of them. And call her selfish, but she'd love it if Delia would fall in love with Komarr and want to make her home there. But that's getting much too far ahead of herself, she chides herself. Delia hasn't even been there. It's a little too early to start picking out which shares would make a good wedding present. Laisa frowns slightly, wondering how they do partner-presents on Barrayar. What do they give each other to show commitment and heart-felt emotion? Laisa has no idea. And Delia's the one she would ask about that, damn it. She's going to have to find another Barrayaran woman she can ask to find out how Barrayarans manage these things.

Maybe she could ask Duv? He spends enough time around Barrayarans of marriageable age, he might know.

"It looks amazing from what I've seen in vids," Delia says. "And your stories are wonderful. I want to visit those places," she says, slipping her hand into Laisa's.

 

\---

 

Laisa takes Joanna out to meet Delia on the first day it's actually sunny instead of raining and/or snowing constantly.

Joanna and Delia assess each other warily, before Delia offers a peace offering of a compliment on her latest publication, and then Joanna asks about Delia's research, mentioning that Laisa's been talking about it in glowing terms, which is both true and makes Delia give Laisa a few very warm looks.

It takes them all of fifteen minutes after that before they're tearing through the biscuits that Laisa'd gotten from the Keroslav bakery a few blocks away and comparing bad jokes.

Joanna starts with the one about the Escobaran peach pie and Delia counters with a filthy limerick about Cetagandan haut ladies. Joanna ups the ante with the four ships and three wormholes one that has never ever been funny, Laisa will always insist even though she always laughs. Oh, the shame of it all.

 

"A Komarran, a Betan, and a Barrayaran are walking down the street when they meet an Earthling. The Earthling asks 'I'm sorry, I'm terribly lost. Where could I find the time?' 'An excellent question,' the Betan says, and proceeds to give the Earthling an introduction to existentialism."

"What does the Barrayaran do, go ask their liege lord for permission to give someone the time of day?"

"The Barrayaran," she says, warming to challenge, "says it's after hours somewhere, and goes to get drunk. The Earthling says, that's not very helpful. The Komarran shrugs and says, buy a clock. -- what? I've always been terrible at telling bad jokes. I don't know. _You_ try one."

"You already know the one where the Komarran takes a deep breath and suffocates?"

"Yes, and the Betan takes a deep breath and drowns in sand, and the Cetagandan takes a deep breath and critiques the lack of artistry of their deaths. You're going to have to try harder than that."

 

"Suddenly, the Devil looms over the planet, come back to take his own. ImpSec panics. The Barrayarans start screaming. And the Komarrans go about their day as usual, because who looks _up_?"

"That one was better when it was about Betans," Joanna says. "They really don't ever look up. Because what's to see? They live underground."

"Betans build down, Komarrans build up, Barrayarans build out, and Cetagandans invade the next-door neighbors," Laisa finishes, knowing her line.

 

\---

 

Delia takes her to Vorhartung Castle one day when the weather is too bad to explore the park they'd meant to see. There's enough security milling around that the Emperor has to be there as well, but they're keeping to the public places, so it shouldn't matter.

The gallery is large and impressive and everything the tour books said it would be. But the advantage of going with a native are clear when Delia leads her to a small, out of the way room that turns out to be a small alcove with a sliding door that's towards the back of a portrait and sculpture gallery. They sit down on padded benches and Laisa takes the moment to rest her feet while she looks around.

"What is this room?" Laisa asks. It's beautiful but dark and it looks like they aren't supposed to be there. That must be just an illusion, though. If they weren't allowed in, they wouldn't have been able to make it in. Or maybe that's just the sort of thing that Delia's been tsking over her about, that tendency to assign omnipotence to the Barrayaran security forces. Laisa's certainly seen them make mistakes, but it's just natural to have the automatic assumption be that they wouldn't make that kind of mistake -- just letting a Komarran wander anywhere she'd like -- at Vorhartung Castle, the meeting place of the Counts, and while the Emperor is on the premises.

And this is the public part. This is where they have parties and receptions and everything that's public. Maybe it is all left open, with ImpSec and the Castle security focusing their time and resources and attention on making sure that no one gets beyond the cordoned-off area. It's not as if there's anything security-sensitive in a room like this, it's just artwork. Surely this must all be part of the grand Imperial show, part of the tourist trap. It just seems dangerous because the crowds haven't made their way here. It just seems dangerous because it's just them. But there isn't anything here that needs to be guarded beyond the most basic assurance that no one is going to run through and wreak havoc.

"Welcome to The Emperor Dorca Gallery," Delia says, "created by Dorca the Just after the Unification Wars. There's a bust of every Count he had beheaded down on that end," Delia points to the far side of the room, "and these are all glorious depictions of glorious battles. It's Dorca's propaganda war against the Counts. Pierre le Sanguinaire, they say, wanted him to actually put the heads of the ones he beheaded here for all to see, but even Dorca thought that was too much and just commissioned busts for him to show off and make his point. It must have been really easy to seem reasonable by comparison when the one you're being compared to is Pierre le Sanguinaire. Madame Vorfolse at school said that's why they used to think Dorca kept Pierre around, even long after it was politically-inconvenient for him to keep supporting him. Because it made Dorca look very good and reasonable and, well, Just."

"How... Barrayaran," Laisa says delicately and Delia lets out of a peel of laughter.

"Sorry, sorry," Delia says, waving her glass expressively. "It's only you sound exactly like Countess Vorkosigan when you say that. And you're right, of course," she recovers. "It's very Barrayaran."

"Didn't any of the families ever protest?" Laisa asks. She can imagine exactly what would happen on Komarr if the Barrayarans started displaying trophies.

"To _Dorca_?" Delia asks skeptically. "If they did, they probably didn't live long after that."

"But afterwards?"

Delia shrugs. "Yuri wouldn't have given them away or taken them down. I don't think Ezar would have, either. I don't know."

"And I suppose the families don't care anymore." Laisa says. It was only a hundred years ago, but Barrayarans have shorter life spans. But Barrayarans do always boast about how long their memories are.

"I guess Gregor could ceremonially donate them to the Imperial Art Museum," Delia says skeptically. "That would at least remove some of the insult. But it's not like the Counts didn't respond. Gregor has to walk by his uncle's scalp all the time."

Admiral Vorkosigan, Laisa remembers being told, actually took part in that execution. She wonders if the Emperor thinks about that, too, when he sees the scalp. The Barrayarans butcher their own as well.


	4. Chapter 4

They've only been dating a few weeks when Laisa invites Delia to come to a Komarran trade group event as her date. Everyone at the shipping syndicate meeting this morning had been exchanging gossip and speculation about Laisa's Barrayaran and Laisa had told them to learn some patience and wait and see. That hadn't worked at all, but Laisa refused to break the mystery. It's not like Delia's dangerous and so needs to be warned for. She's not Duv.

After work, Laisa goes to the University district to pick Delia up and take her back to her apartment to get ready. Delia had brought her clothes over last night, a blatantly transparent excuse to get Delia into her apartment and give them some time alone. It had gone so well that Laisa hadn't wanted to let Delia leave to go to University in the morning and had contemplated calling in sick and trying to arrange a day in bed together, but Delia's much more conscientious than Laisa is, which Laisa suspects she could grow to like. It could keep her honest, if nothing else.

They detour through the caravanserai on the way to Laisa's apartment and buy some of Laisa's favorite pastries. Delia says, "trust me", and winds her through narrow streets, taking her to a restaurant in what little remains of the original caravanserai -- a pretty notorious slum, from what Laisa's heard -- that has some mouth-watering sandwiches. They buy five of them, Delia directing what's good and what's not and what's actually amazing but looks terrible. She's learned that she can always trust Delia to know about good food and where to find it.

"My grandfather was a grocer," Delia explains as they walk the rest of the way. "He died before I was born, but my father's passed on his tricks of always making sure you get good stuff. Or, if you don't, get the least worst stuff. My father says you wouldn't believe the kinds of things that skill's applicable for. I looked up his record -- my grandfather's, I mean -- and it looks like he was a quartermaster during one of Dorca's wars, so that's no surprise that a grocer was able to put his son through a District academy in those days. It wasn't cheap or easy, and I'm very sure how he did it wasn't legal in the slightest."

Delia doesn't sound like this is in any way a bad thing or something to be whispered about. She doesn't seem proud of it, either, the way people back home would be to get away with cheating the Empire out of anything substantial.

Then again, Laisa knows how it goes on Barrayar. Steal from one person, you're a thief. Steal from a thousand, you're a Count. Steal from a million, you're the Emperor.

"You shouldn't be ashamed, Da always says," Delia says when Laisa mentions that. "You come from where you come, and you make of it what you can. And to make a world where you don't have to be ashamed, we have to act like we already live in that world. Countess Vorkosigan always says that Barrayar's a continuous creation. We're just creating it the way we want it."

Laisa is slowly getting used to Delia quoting _Countess Vorkosigan_ all the time and even Lady Alys Vorpatril occasionally. It's easier when Laisa thinks of it like it's like Laisa quoting her Aunt Anna about stock trading or Rhea Kozani about lightflyer mechanics. It's the same thing. It's just different honorary family members and friends of your parents. Laisa's as well-connected as Delia is, and Delia's well-aware that her connections are only one generation deep. Laisa's family roots aren't anything to be ashamed of, or make a point of not being ashamed of. It's only on Barrayar where being Komarran is something to be self-conscious about.

 

 

Delia's one of about seven Barrayarans in the room, but she's tall enough, towering over everyone in her supremely Barrayaran fashions, that she could pass for a Komarran looking to blend in on Barrayar.

Laisa is not about to tell her that, of course. She values her life.

"I'm Delia Koudelka," Delia says, well-practiced, introducing herself around the room without needing help from Laisa. "I'm a graduate student at the Agricultural and Engineering Institute in the capital. I'm studying textile engineering."

 

 

One of the few Barrayarans there happens to be Lady Donna Vorrutyer, who Delia knows socially, which is a Barrayaran euphemism for 'we've dated the same Vor idiot'. The Vor idiot in question seems to be Lord Ivan Vorpatril, from the sound of things, and Laisa frowns because she'd thought that Delia 'dating' Lord Vorpatril had been the same way Delia had been 'dating' Lord Vorkosigan the night she and Laisa had met.

"I was just pretending to date him as an excuse to get an invitation to parties," Delia explains, bending slightly to whisper in Laisa's ear. "She was just pretending to date him as an excuse to sleep with him. She's _notorious_ ," Delia adds, brighter. "You might like her. She enjoys screwing with everyone's sense of propriety and she's a Count's sister _and_ she completely gets away with everything. You could write home about her. That's got to be an amazing example of what modern Barrayar is like, right?"

That the Vor can do whatever they want? No, not really. Everyone at home already knows all about that.

 

"Tell me," Lady Donna says. "How is the medical treatment on Komarr? You must have more options than we do here."

"Oh, yes," Laisa says. "We have excellent medical facilities, both on the orbitals and downside."

"As good as you can find on Beta Colony?" Lady Donna asks.

"Some even better," Laisa says patriotically. "We've got the advantage of the wormholes, we get some advances faster than Beta." Unless Beta's the one to invent them, of course. But some planets have taken a look at Barrayar and taken a certain amount of pity, and offered Komarr more than they normally would, knowing full well that Barrayarans are backward enough to never want to touch any of those advances.

Komarr's also the closest place to Barrayar for Barrayarans who want to deal with... particular problems without having to leave the Imperium. There are a lot of Barrayarans who take advantage of that convenience. But Laisa knows better than to insinuate that Lady Donna has a mutation that she needs to have fixed.

"Fascinating," Lady Donna says. "And medical privacy? With Barrayar around, that can't be easy to manage."

"We do what we can," Laisa says. She won't say more on that subject to any Vor, even one who Delia thinks is 'notorious'.

 

Delia comes over, bearing another glass of wine for Laisa.

"Miss Koudelka," Lady Donna says, offering her hand. Delia shakes it. "It's been too long."

"It's been about three weeks," Delia says dryly. "I think."

Lady Donna grins wide and Laisa shifts uncomfortably. She doesn't like that look. It looks like Lady Donna is about to try to rip Delia to pieces with nothing but her teeth. "Oh, yes, since that interesting little party of Gregor's. How has your family been?"

"They're well," Delia says. She takes a sip of her drink.

"And your sister Olivia?" Lady Donna asks.

Delia stops completely and then, pointedly, swallows the wine in her mouth. "Very well," she says. "Why do you ask?" she asks, not casually.

"No reason," Lady Donna says. "We seem to have some research interests in common, that's all. She offered to help me with some sourcing."

Oh, Delia'll bet she did. On their hands and knees in dark, narrow spaces where there's nothing to be done but brush up against each other constantly and brush dust out of each other's hair in search for the tiniest legal precedent. Just because Olivia's studying to be a lawyer doesn't mean she has the right to make such blatant innuendo. Not that Delia pointing that out to her would get her to stop, of course. But Delia occasionally lives in hope. She's the older sister. That means she's older and wiser and her siblings should listen to her, and one day maybe they'll even pretend to take that seriously.

Okay, they took that seriously when they were about five. But not since then. Delia probably missed the window of opportunity. Such a shame. She should have appreciated it when she had the chance. Oh, for what is lost and will never come again.

"I'll tell her that you asked after her," Delia says. "If it's important, I'm sure she will call you."

"Yes, I'm sure she will," Lady Donna says dryly and Delia does choke on her wine at that. "Give my best to your family," Lady Donna says and swans away.

 

\---

 

Delia returns the favor the next week by bringing Laisa along to a party hosted by one of her Vor friends who married a Count. "My dad might come, but he'll be late if he does," Delia says. "But I want you to meet Tatya. She's great."

 

"Watch," Delia whispers to Laisa, grinning.

An ensign, wandering on the edge of drunkenly, suddenly finds himself faced with Commodore Koudelka. The ensign comes to attention so quickly, he falls over.

Commodore Koudelka leans on his sword stick and looks down, disappointed, at the ensign.

"I'll never get tired of that," Delia says. "You don't know what my Da went through when he was younger, and then after he was injured. And now Vor idiots trip over themselves to salute him." 

 

 

Introducing Laisa to her friends is hilarious. Delia totally does not laugh as her friends try to interrogate the new Komarran on the scene and Laisa masterfully turns it around on them and gets the details of what they're studying from all of them and starts giving Nitsa advice on where she could apply those skills the best.

"Come see us when you graduate," Laisa says, warming to her 'come to Komarr' recruitment pitch. "Solstice University is always desperate for new talent and they'd love to have you. Let me know when you're going to apply and I'll write you a letter of reference."

Nitsa looks starry-eyed, and Delia's half-way there herself.

 

\---

Laisa has such amazing friends. They're all Komarrans and they look at Delia like she's there on Laisa's sufferance until the moment she opens her mouth and starts discussing her thesis project with one of them. Then they become much more friendly. Some of them even have good suggestions, which, in Delia's experience, was unheard of outside of academic circles.

It doesn't show them as having had much faith in Barrayarans, but then again, Barrayarans probably haven't given them much reason to have any faith.

Duv Galeni is one of Laisa's friends that Delia's seen around a few times, but never talked to. He doesn't socialize that much with the main group of Laisa's friends and coworkers, which makes some kind of sense. He's ImpSec and they're all Komarrans. Even though Duv's a Komarran, too, that must be awkward.

But he's Laisa's best friend on this planet, aside from her roommate, and that would endear Delia to him immediately if he hadn't charmed her himself. He's not like most ImpSec Captains that Delia meets, who tend towards aloof and boring and prone to a particular belief that not being able to say a word about what they do makes them mysterious and therefore insatiable to any woman. Delia also keeps secrets. So does everybody she knows. It's not a special talent.

Duv's more serious, but he has a snarky side that's delightful and hilarious. He's smart, too, and he can discuss things outside of classified files with the same expertise that he probably shows in those things he can't talk about. There's more to him than ImpSec and that's a marvel, it truly is. He's not a Komarran version of a Vor bore. Delia could like him for that alone.

 

\---

 

Duv's a good friend and Laisa worries about him. He's thrown in his lot with the Barrayarans and he's never going to flinch. But playing the assimilation game means he's going to have to find some Barrayaran woman to marry him, and which of them would do that?

Still, he'll have better luck, she thinks somewhat guiltily, with Barrayaran women. Some Barrayaran women, like the ones who come to Komarr and decide to never leave, seem enchanted by the idea of Komarran men. Maybe a Barrayaran woman stuck on this planet might see in a Komarran collaborator the same thing those Barrayarans see on Komarr: a man who isn't like the men back home.

It's better luck, even if it's going to take him a while to find one. Because what Komarran woman worth her voting shares would ever marry Duv Galeni, a collaborator and, even worse, an ImpSec officer?

The Galens were one of the foundational families, the ones who built Solstice, and Duv's the one the Galens back home don't like to think about, the one who went bad. Laisa's heard a lot about Duv before she met him at that conference five months ago, and while not all of it is true, there is something not quite Komarran about Duv anymore.

But maybe his only hope isn't a Barrayaran. Maybe a Komarran woman might go for him, one of the younger ones who don't remember the Revolt, who don't know who Richard Galen was or why everyone was shocked when his son turned traitor. One of the new generation might be able to look at that blend of Komarr and Barrayar and think it could be something she'd let into her bed.

Or maybe someone older, too, someone who didn't get caught up in the bloodthirst of it all, maybe one of Admiral Vorkosigan's original collaborators. He'd had support on Komarr before the Massacre. Some shareholders had liked his proposals, had been interested in creating a merger with Barrayar. Barrayar, after all, had a planet where you could breathe the air. Komarr had wormholes and unbreathable air. They had things to offer each other.

Maybe one of those would like Duv's particular blend. Duv didn't merge Komarr and Barrayar, he surrendered, but then again, so did Komarr. And a man who submits once might do it again. Duv gave up Komarr, gave up his name, gave up his politics, gave up his home and made a new one. He's shown he can do what he swears he will do. He's shown he can keep his word.

A Barrayar who keeps his promises, but still knows the domes and feels the proper gravity in his bones. But ImpSec... well, Duv would only need to find one person to marry. There's probably someone out there.

And Duv's been tentatively mentioning dating, so he's probably thought out all the problems as well. Laisa can't think of anyone in her cohort back home who'd date him, not if it would mean also dating ImpSec, but the Komarrans on Barrayar are different. They have to be. Most of Laisa's cohort back home are all involved in interstellar trade and pointedly avoid Barrayar, but Laisa didn't. She came here, knowing what it would be. Others did, too. Maybe Duv could find love with one of them.

But he's probably not interested in a Komarran, not someone who knows what he gave up but hasn't given it up themselves. He'll probably find a Barrayaran. Laisa knows from Delia that Barrayarans don't necessarily tend to have better feelings about ImpSec than Komarrans do, but the numbers game gives him some advantage.

He'll be fine, Laisa firmly decides. Barrayar has a structured marriage market geared toward officers. He'll probably deal with some rejection, but Duv's been dealing with rejection all his life. He knows how to handle it. He'll be fine.

 

\---

 

Delia's never been off planet. Her father served with the Count and has been all over the galaxy and got his injuries on Sergyar and that was his unofficial reason for why he'd declined to follow the Count to Sergyar again, even though he'd been offered a promotion if he went. A promotion on a colony planet was one thing. A promotion to a colony planet where he'd nearly died was something else entirely. He'd missed the invasion of Escobar because he'd still been recovering from what they'd then thought was unrecoverable. Da did go to Escobar with the Count during the Regency on a state visit. Delia had been very young, but she remembers how Captain Illyan had brought her Da back from the shuttleport when they'd returned and they'd both looked a lot older than they had when they left.

Da hasn't been off planet since then, although Mama talks wistfully of a vacation on Beta, maybe for a big wedding anniversary.

And Mama's been to Komarr. She accompanied Gregor on his first state visit there and she'd been on duty most of the time, but she still talks sometimes about walking through the domes and how different it was there and how much different it probably would be now, now that it's not in the middle of the Revolt.

And now Kareen's doing a year of study on Beta Colony and her letters are full of how different Beta is and how amazing everything is and, reading between the lines, how much she isn't sure she wants to come home. Delia hopes Kareen's being more circumspect in her letters to Mama and Da because they can read through the lines, too, and they'll be heartbroken if Kareen decides to stay out in the galaxy and only come home to visit about as often as Miles does. If even that often. 

Delia's never been one to stare up at the stars and want to reach out and grab them and would be perfectly fine if a passing solar wind made her drift out into the stars, never to come home again. She's not even been one of those who can't wait to get off of this planet. But Delia would like to see Komarr, at least. She's always been interested by it, by how _different_ it must be, but it's like going to the next District over. Sure, things are different, but it's not _too_ different. It's not _Beta Colony_.

And Komarr is sitting on top of a major trade nexus, so you can get just about anything from anywhere in the galaxy if you're willing to dig around for it. It's the best of all worlds.

So she's wanted to visit. And now that Laisa has come into her life, Delia wants to go there even more. She wants to visit the places in Laisa's stories, wants to meet her friends and family, wants to walk where Laisa knows exactly where she is and all of the ways to get home from there. She wants to see Laisa as she is at home: comfortable, relaxed, utterly at ease. Delia wants that so much she can taste it.

And she wants to explore Komarran fashions, too. Seeing Laisa and her friends on Barrayar has opened Delia's eyes to how Komarran clothes must work in practice and it's fascinating. Delia wants to see that how it works at home. She's seen holovids and other things about Komarrans and of course they've shown how Komarrans dress, but she's never _realized_. Seeing it is different, she decides. And she would like to see it, see more examples than just Laisa and her friends of Barrayar, who may have adjusted things to fit Barrayaran sensibilities, the same way that Betans get warned not to go around in just sarongs on Barrayar. It's like how Kareen says she's had to adjust some of her Barrayaran-ness on Beta. Different planet just have different ways of being. Beta's a warren and Betans don't go outside unless they have to. Komarrans live in domes and also don't go outside unless they have to. That kind of reality is hard for Delia to wrap her head around. She's studied it and she's heard about it from people born and bred there. But it's hard to imagine how anyone can live that way, _how_ they manage to live in that kind of environment. But when you're on Komarr or Beta, that kind of mindset must be natural. Delia wonders if it starts to settle in as soon as you leave the shuttle port, like your gravity is different and so you're aligned to a different kind of reality just automatically.

There's probably an entire discipline of study related to the psychology of living on different planets and how it can fuck you up to change what planet you live on. Delia wonders if she should pick up a literature review or something, just to help get her head around the reality that more and more Barrayarans every year willingly enter into: leaving the planet to go somewhere else and then coming back.

Or she could just ask Tante Cordelia. 

Delia jots down a quick note to ask Tante Cordelia about that in her next letter, and then grabs her wrap to go meet Laisa. Different perspectives are important, Delia thinks. She'll ask Laisa if she, in her expert opinion about Komarrans, thinks it would be acceptable to ask Duv about it, too.

If Delia's going to go back to Komarr with Laisa, if only just to visit and be a tourist on Laisa's planet the way Laisa has been on Delia's, and Delia is so going to get her turn on all of the tours she's taken Laisa on, then it would be best to be prepared. There's no sense in wasting precious vacation time on being planet-lagged. It's just not sensible, and Delia is nothing if not devoted to trying to be as sensible as possible at all times.

Olivia would laugh and laugh at that, Delia thinks, _but_ (and _shut up, Olivia_ ), she can be sensible about thinks that other people think are, by their nature, not sensible things. She can be sensible about clothes even though Olivia thinks clothes are superfluous and only useful as weapons. Olivia can go ahead and consider her dresses to be grenades of a different sort, but that doesn't mean that Delia's being absurd by being sensible about clothes. It's just a different kind of mentality about what matters and how you can bend things to your use. They both consider clothes to be useful, it's just that their perspective on it are different. Or not that different, Delia considers (oh, shut up, Olivia, this doesn't mean you've won), breaking apart her own feelings about clothes to their base elements, maybe it's just that Olivia is being more blunt about it--

\--this was a terrible metaphor, Delia decides.

"Forget it," she mutters to Laisa, who is, very politely, laughing behind her napkin.

"I didn't say a word," Laisa says, laughter lighting up her eyes. "Not a single word."

"You didn't have to," Delia mutters and tears a piece off of her dinner roll. "I'm a _mind reader_."

"Congratulations," Laisa says seriously and then dissolves into giggles. She holds up a hand. "Sorry, sorry."

"Watch, I'll read your mind right now," Delia says. "Behold. You're thinking: that Delia Koudelka--"

"I could just kiss her," Laisa interrupts her.

Delia's face lights up and Laisa leans over the table and kisses her, still laughing slightly. Delia cups Laisa's cheek and explores her mouth and Laisa stops laughing abruptly.

"That's much more like it," Delia says happily after they part. "I'm not sounding stupid, you're not looking at me like I'm cracking you up, everybody wins."

 

\---

 

Delia's always looked up to Lady Alys the most. This differentiated her from Martya, who was always Mama's little girl, and Olivia and Kareen, who could not be parted from Tante Cordelia without tears and recriminations and sulking.

And Delia loves and admires her mama and she loves and admires Tante Cordelia, but Lady Alys Vorpatril is the _best_. She always had candy to slip to Delia and by the time Delia came around, Martya always says, Lady Alys was tired of boys and ready to spoil a girl, and so spoil a girl she had.

And when Lady Alys has started asking Delia to run messages for her or whisper something to someone or give someone some kind of sign, Delia had been happy to help out. It had seemed devious, like playing kid games with adults while the other adults didn't know it was going on. The whole point of it was being secret and Delia, already saddled with three sisters and tired of what came with being the oldest, had _loved_ that.

As she'd gotten older, she'd been more and more exposed to just how secret and clandestine it was, and the nature of the messages going back forth, the nature of the game she was playing. She'd gotten more and more responsibility in it, been privy to more details, and had even helped plan certain intelligence operations.

She's a woman, so she can't join the military, but who cares about ImpSec? This is _so much better_. Lady Alys has been giving her more and more responsibility, showing her how to do things, _listening_ to her and treating her ideas like they're good ideas and not Lady Alys just humoring a friend's daughter.

And it's great fun and very interesting, and it's important, too.

Last year, Gregor had read her in. Lady Alys had arranged a private audience for her, and then Gregor had sat her down, discussed what she had been doing for Lady Alys, and read her into the operation. It's mostly Lady Alys's idea, but Gregor's heavily involved. He has to be, he's the Emperor, and it's the direction and future of his Empire that Lady Alys is influencing and controlling and spying on. It's a major part of Gregor's agenda, and when Gregor had asked Delia if she were interested in being a part of the more secret parts of it, she'd said yes without any reservations.

It's not as romantic as it sounds. The holovids always make it so much more glamorous. And it is glamorous by its nature since so much of it revolves around the Imperial Court. But a lot of it, most of it, is in the work that goes on behind the scenes. It's in planning and strategy sessions and recruitment and keeping secrets and studying intelligence.

And Delia's even more unobtrusive, because she's studying something so benign. Textile development is important in so many ways, but none of them matter to the sort of person who looks over her anyway for being a woman and a prole. Delia can be invisible. Delia also has connections.

And Delia is helping with work that matters, both academically and here, with helping Lady Alys. This is a matter of life and death and the future of the Imperium. This is _important_. This _matters_. And it has its glamorous moments, too, which make it even better. Delia's not one to turn down glamorous when it knocks on her door and asks her to dance. She likes the shine and the sparkle. But she also likes the substance. And she gets to have all of that. She doesn't have to choose.

Because Gregor has a direction he wants to steer his Empire toward, and Lady Alys is the Admiral of that invasion, and Delia is one of her women. Delia isn't charting new paths like her parents had; she's playing a part in a game that's much older. But even Delia Koudelka has a part to play. And she doesn't have to leave her own path to do it.

 

The current, constant, emergency in domestic circles is Gregor still not being married and showing no signs of interest in it at all. This is causing all kinds of problems, and Delia's spending a day each week in Lady Alys's office, sitting and paying attention and helping all she can. This is Vor Dragon territory and Delia watches and occasionally contributes a comment as Lady Alys schemes with Countesses and their sisters and their daughters.

The purpose of all of this is to diffuse the situation long enough for Gregor to actually find someone to marry and then to get married. So that means calming tempers and stroking egos and keeping everything all nice and peaceful, with no Count storming the Residence and demanding to be made Gregor's heir as the price of keeping the fragile peace from shattering into civil war.

It would all be much more helpful and stop Lady Alys from having to perform amazing political gymnastics keep everything from falling apart if Gregor would just get married, or make a decision not to get married and then name his heir. That would be very helpful, yes.

But Gregor, when Delia had last asked him carefully if he was planning on getting married any time soon, had turned it into a joke and asked if she was trying to get him to date Martya, and that idea had been horrifying enough -- just the _thought_ of Mama's face if she'd heard that -- that Delia hadn't mentioned it. But Gregor joking about courting Delia's sister just makes it all the more clear that, no, Gregor really doesn't intend to do anything about this any time soon.

Which is a problem.

There are many ways to solve it, some of which have something to do with reality and some of which don't.

Delia thinks the biggest sign was last year, when Gregor approved Mark as Miles's heir. Putting a strange clone that no one had ever met before in a Countship inheritance line was a strong signal, to Delia at least, that Gregor had no illusions that Countship inheritance was anything that needed to be kept separate and apart and pure, the way some of the old Counts carry on every time someone whispers about some Count's heir doing this or doing that, or how that Count wants to make so-and-so his heir, and how terrible that would be for the planet. Gregor was saying, your heir is your own problem and your own choice. And then Mark had been named and Gregor had smiled the entire time.

Countship inheritance is some kind of joke, indeed. But Gregor's not only in on the joke, he's one of the driving forces behind making sure it becomes a joke and stays that way. This would all be really tragic if Gregor weren't self-aware about how he's immolating Countship tradition faster than Emperor Vlad le Savante laughing over Vortala's horse. If Gregor weren't the one spreading the fire himself.

And Delia can help.

Delia is serving her Emperor by helping. She's serving her planet. She's serving her family. She's serving the future.

It's an honor and it's exciting and sometimes it's even exceptionally boring. But that's part of it, too.

ImpSec might think they have their pulse on Domestic Affairs, but the real domestic affairs are controlled, monitored, and guided here, in Lady Alys's office, as they steer the ship of the Imperium, with Gregor serving as navigator.

 

\---

 

One of the really annoying things about Barrayar is how Laisa keeps having to adjust her basic frame of reference.

When one of the Barrayarans refers to Duv as an older man, implying that it wasn't seemly --and who cares about seemly anyway? She's a Toscane heir, it's not as if she needs the money -- to be friends with him, Laisa has no idea what he's talking about. Duv's only slighter older, just enough that his memories of the Revolt are from a slightly older perspective, and certainly more nuanced because of what happened to his family.

"I don't really get this," she admits to Delia. "You're the first real friend I've had here, a Barrayaran friend, I mean."

"It's all down to gene cleaning, mainly," Delia shrugs. She keeps massaging Laisa's shoulders, tsking at the tension there. Laisa sighs happily as Delia works through a particularly terrible knot. "My two youngest sisters came out of a replicator and so their life expectancy is something like fifty, sixty years longer than mine; probably more, we don't know, but certainly that much at least. It's all down to what you're born with. I wasn't born with healthy genes -- almost no one our age was, here. And I'm better off, because I've had much better medical care than most girls my age and I've got an implant." 

Delia stutters to a stop after that and Laisa looks back at her, concerned. "Are you okay?"

Delia laughs, forcing it. "Fine, fine. That's only the first I've ever told anyone that. Couldn't tell anyone that, and I didn't really mean to say it. But of course you don't mind," she continues. "Komarrans -- on Komarr, this is probably expected, right?"

"I wouldn't say expected," Laisa says, not sure what she would say. She considers it for a moment. "It's not strange, that's how I would put it. After the conquest and during the revolt, you had to go off-planet to have it done, because the Barrayarans thought it was disgusting. Then after, it was allowed again, and so I had mine in when I was fifteen. But it's-- yes, it's expected. If someone didn't have one, that would very strange. You'd wonder why they decided not to get it. You can always have it taken out later, but to not get it at all? Yes, that would be something... strange. Not necessarily remarked on," she adds, because Delia's explained basic concepts to her, and so Laisa should return the favor, "because that might imply moralistic judgment and that wouldn't be polite and appropriate and it's against the colony charter to imply fault in procreational choices. But it would be... something out of the ordinary."

"That sounds amazing," Delia breathes. "To live in opposite world. No wonder we never leave when we come to Komarr. I mean, yes, there's ImpSec everywhere, but you're right in the middle of galactic _everything_. And imagine a world where your procreational choices are _rude_ to talk about, instead of something everyone and their father think they have the right, _must_ have the right, to have control over. Do you know how hard it can be to get one of these if you're not in a major city, and even if you are, how hard it is? Nearly impossible, that's how. Tante Cordelia keeps trying to get this into the rural areas, talks about it as a basic civil right, a basic _human_ right, and she's managed to get it into her District, and some of the other High Vor have managed it in their Districts, but Gregor can't manage to get anything passed to make it so that no one can deny a woman an implant if she wants one. And he does keep trying."

 

"Olivia and Kareen's gene cleaning went pretty well, from what I've overheard, but there was only so much they could do. One of Ma's great-aunts had a couple mutie kids back during isolation. Turns out when they did the check for Olivia, Ma's a carrier. I'm one, too; Martya isn't. It's nothing terrible," Delia presses on, because this is a subject that Barrayarans who are going to have kids together need to have with each other, about the monsters in their genetic closets, but one that she doesn't think a Komarran has ever had to have, and aren't they all so lucky for that, and, yes, she's making a lot of assumptions about where her relationship with Laisa is headed, but this is important, engagements get broken all the time over someone finding out someone's cousin had mutie kids back in the day, and even if Laisa is never the type to care, Delia's still got centuries of cultural conditioning to break through and it's not going to happen in an afternoon, "and it's fixable with a uterine replicator before birth, and with some not-so-complicated medical treatments after that. But it's there. Olivia and Kareen aren't-- sorry, I can't tell you their genetic statues, they'd kill me, and it's one of those Barrayaran things. You can only talk about your own, and maybe your parents, depending. I can, because we've all had that conversation so many times. But everyone knows you can only do so much with it, and you're stuck with the genes you have, unless you're willing to do something that most techs will advise you might actually be against inheritance law to do. Because then you're messing with who your generic parents are. There was a guy over in Dorca's Port two years ago who had to get his dad to adopt him after he had some extensive treatment done."

 

Laisa slides closer to her and puts her hand on Delia's. "You want to hear my secret? I'm not ashamed of it, not really, but I don't like to tell people, because of the way they look at you. Like you've changed, like you're not the person they thought you were, or, worse, are not as good of a person as they thought you were. But I'm afflicted with incurable romanticism--"

"I knew that," Delia says softly, lips twisting into a pained smile.

"About Barrayaran mythology and folklore," Laisa finishes. Delia exhales and relaxes minutely. "Coming from a Komarran, it can sound rather..."

"Duv-ish," Delia offers. She'll never understand how Komarrans look at Duv, but she understands too well how Barrayarans do. It can't be any nicer from the other perspective.

Laisa nods. "Sort of. But he's complicit in his betrayal to those who would think of his choices that way -- and I don't, believe me, I know what he faced and I don't blame him, even though I wouldn't make his choices, and I doubt he'd make mine -- but mine's pitiful. That poor dear, brainwashed from childhood, she can't help herself. And then, quieter, we have to be careful not to let our own children become like her. So you can see why... why I don't like to say anything about it. But it's one reason I came here. I can indulge and it looks only like I'm actually indulging the occupiers and playing flattery games."

 

"What Duv's done isn't integration, not the way we see it back home. Duv's gone and surrendered. He's submitted completely to the Barrayaran invasion. He's taken their name, he's repudiated everything he was, and he has, from the point of view of everyone back home, by his actions and his words become the enemy. That's not integration, that's surrender. That's submission to the Barrayaran Emperor. And it's saved his life and I understand the reasons for why he did what he did, but that's not Komarran integration, and if anyone tries to use him as a model for Komarran integration, they're missing the point entirely of what integration is.

"Integration is, you accept us for what we are, and we accept you for what you are. Integration is, we live among each other and learn from each other and work together and become a new whole from two distinct parts. Integration requires respect and it requires equality and it's never going to happen if Barrayar treats Komarr like a money purse it can keep squeezing, with the threat of destroying us from orbit if we put a foot out of line."

"Even Duv's forgotten this. I think it was a reaction to the Revolt, honestly. He lived through bad times, really bad times. He lost his entire immediate family in the Revolt. And then-- well, we all got the propaganda. The difference with Duv was, he really didn't see any other option. He'd been through hell and came out the other side and he decided to go to the other extreme from the one he'd been on. Since our guerrilla war against the invaders hadn't solved anything in ten years, Duv decided to side with the people who'd taken _twenty_ years to win their guerrilla war against their invaders. He decided to change his name and become as much of a Barrayaran as possible. Protective coloration. Joining the military was never his main focus; it couldn't have been, it wasn't open to us until a few years ago. No, Duv wanted academia and he got it. But then Barrayar waved a shiny distraction in his face. The military is the backbone of Barrayaran society; you're nobody without a military title or military service. So Duv swallowed that propaganda, too, and went merrily off to the Academy."

 

"You can tell Duv I've said this if you want," Laisa says. "If it slips out or anything. It's not a secret. We've discussed it several times. I'm trying -- we're trying, the Komarrans here are trying -- to get him to understand that integration doesn't mean each of us doing what he did. It means Barrayarans have to give some and we give some and we find consensuses. We're more alike than we're different, that's a major tenant of humanity. And yet the philosophy of the Barrayaran government towards Komarr has never been actual integration. It's getting closer, inching bit by bit, but it's not there yet."

"And, yes, we have to leave room for Duv's choice. We have to leave room for Komarrans to decide to become Barrayarans. But that works the other way as well: Barrayar has to leave room for Barrayarans to become Komarrans. It can't only ever be one way. Is that ever going to happen? I don't know, but that's part of what I'm working towards. We need control over our shipping, we can't keep being under guard on our own ships. Either we're part of the Barrayaran empire or we're nothing but your shock troops. And if we're your shock troops, you shouldn't be letting us out into the Nexus anyway."

 

"We have to stop being your bogeymen. If we're the embodiment of everything you fear, then you can't reason with us. If we're something that has to be stomped down and subjugated, then you can't trade with you. If we aren't _human_ , then you can't make deals with us. And all of that is necessary. So something has to change."

 

"No, I get it. It's like those galactic restaurants you like," Delia says. "It takes two distinct things and makes a third distinct, but different, thing out of them. It uses Barrayaran bones, uh, ingredients to form a galactic shape. And it's all the better for the combination. Alloys are stronger. Mixes are better. Change or stagnate." 

 

"Count Vorkosigan's all right, as Counts go. We used to play with his son when we were kids and now Miles returns the favor and gets us into parties. But the old Count, now he was a Vor nightmare. He thought all incompetence was malicious. Nothing's a mistake, it's all enemy action. He grew up in wars. He'd have the four of us marching in lines, readying us for fighting any future wars. He was intensely serious about all of it."

 

"Barrayarans hate us for what they think we did, because we 'let' the Cetagandans through. Which means they hate us because we always had, since we first decided to stay where we'd found ourselves, to always let ships through. There was a war going on when we got to Komarr, the details of which just aren't important. But the founding ships had to jump blockades, had to justify their passage. They decided that Komarr and our wormholes would never be one of those. We would let anyone through. Since the first planetfall, we've been an open port. It doesn’t matter if you're an aid ship, a war ship, a merchant ship, or the Barrayaran Baba Yaga on stilts. You paid the duty to help us keep up the orbitals that kept the wormholes clear and safe and you went on your way. Everyone. And then the Barrayarans decided that was the height of evil and we haven't had control of our lives since. Such grand moralizing for a planet like this. Too busy preaching morality to us to pay attention to the nose on their faces."

 

\---

 

Once upon a time, Delia was an only child, the apple and delight of her mother and father's eyes, or so Tante Cordelia had reminisced fondly on the day Delia had gone to her and asked for help getting an implant, because Delia hadn't been all that happy with the inevitable march of puberty and hadn't like the idea that on other planets, it would go without saying that she didn't have to have a body-birth, but on Barrayar they made you grab that privilege with both hands and make sure no one could take it from you without a damn huge fight. 

(She loves her mother and she thinks she's a hero, obviously, and she loves Lady Alys and thinks she's amazing, and neither of them ever told her that she should feel some kind of overwhelming need and motherly urge to bear her own children from her own body, thank _fuck_. Ma had even given her a specially-made stuffed uterine replicator toy when Olivia was born and sat down with her and made sure she understood why her newest sister was coming out of a machine.)

And then had come Martya, who had been much too big to be a real baby, Delia had been certain, and so she hadn't been convinced Martya was _really_ her sister for several months. This has had enduring consequences, Delia is certain. Martya thinks Delia is some strange unknowable lifeform and Delia returns the sentiment. And somehow they get along as well as Martya does with any of her sisters, which only reinforces Delia's original assumption: Martya is _strange_. Delia feels qualified to make this judgment. She is, after all, a whole three years older.

And then a lot of things happened and then Olivia came out of a machine and Delia and Martya shoved and elbowed each other over who got to hold her first. Da had cried and so had Ma, and Delia had been very confused by all of this, because Olivia wasn't crying, and wasn't the newborn supposed to cry? _Martya_ had sure cried a lot when she was that age (but never that size, Olivia was _tiny_ , and Delia had felt vindicated: of course her _real_ sister was the proper size for a baby). But Olivia was very quiet until, suddenly, she wasn't, and the crying had only just about stopped when Kareen, baby sister number three and more on the Martya end of the scale than Olivia end, but Kareen had come along when Delia was old enough to appreciate all of the many appealing qualities of babies, for example, that they can distract parents and let the innocent, oh so responsible oldest sister, get away with things she never could have if there were not a brand new baby taking up so much attention.

Delia, at seven, had been ready to be ignored and left alone when she wanted to be, left to her own devices to play all by herself, but still young enough to play with the babies whenever she felt like doing that. Martya had been very betrayed to be considered one of the babies for Kareen's first few months and so Delia had eventually relented and let Martya sneak in to play with her when Kareen and Olivia were being babies together and doing baby things that self-respecting older sisters of the wise old ages of seven and five would never lower themselves to do. (Unless they felt like it.)

 

At least Delia ended up as the tallest of them all. There was a worry that Martya would end up taller, but Delia had one more inch of growth and Martya didn't, so there. It's not much of a triumph but she'll take it. She's nothing like a Vor; she'll take any victory she can get, it doesn't need to be honorable or blood-filled.

Ma's managed to keep getting them shoes that equalize all their heights, just to work the identical impression all the more so.

 

Martya's fundamentally lazy, by which Delia means that once the weather turns cold, Martya treats it like it's always cold. It could be a warm day for late autumn and Martya will still dress like it's snowing. Once she shifts her wardrobe to accommodate the new weather, it stays shifted until the spring has finally thawed all of the frozen memories of the harsh winter.

So on days when it's relatively warm, Martya is still layered up, while Delia is pondering which clothes will provide just the right amount of warmth without making her overheat later in the day. And meanwhile, Martya just rolls her eyes and tells her that she's over-complicating things.

"It's winter," Martya says, like she's explaining this to someone who was just talking down to her and has now tripped over their own ignorance and splattered all over the block with their embarrassment. "Wear your winter clothes. It's all layers anyway. If you get too hot, take one of them off. Honestly, Delia. This isn't five-space math. It's just fashion. It's not _complicated_."

"Fashion is extremely complicated, I will have you know," Delia retorts, but goes with a relatively-light winter sweater anyway. "And me giving in is not an acknowledgment that you were right."

"Oh, please, you're just bowing to my intrinsic superiority," Martya says. "I have all of the best ideas. This would all be a lot shorter if you just listened to me the first time."

"And this kind of attitude is why I don't," Delia says, but Martya just sighs over her again and pats her shoulder consolingly as she walks out of Delia's room, trailing socks behind her.

Delia despairs of her sometimes, she really does.

 

\---

 

Delia's not like any Barrayaran that Laisa's ever met. Oh, she'll admit she's biased. She's so biased, in fact, that she has to stop herself from adding a long list of things that Delia is and the others aren't. Delia's beautiful like a sunrise out-of-dome, thrilling in the danger and the beauty of it, all of its complexities encompassed by the joy of being a part of something so breathtaking.

 

She's romantic enough to fall in love with Barrayar from a distance. She's romantic enough to fall in love with a Barrayaran from up close. She's not going to ignore the rest of it, but it's also something that's not too important right now.

 

Her lips are wonderfully soft.


	5. Chapter 5

Da hasn't been home in a couple days and today, Mama isn't here either. Delia exchanges clueless looks with her sisters over breakfast. The last time Da started sleeping at HQ was when the Prime Minister collapsed in his district, and he was home a few days later. It was nothing urgent, but him keeping that close an eye on everything was the reason why nothing had gone to high alert. When the Prime Minister collapses, things can fall apart, and Da had stayed around to make sure nothing fell apart.

And he'd had to miss Gregor's Birthday Ball, too, so it probably was a lot more dangerous than Da had been willing -- or allowed -- to talk about.

When she was growing up, there had been a few emergencies and Da not being home for a few days or a few weeks. Once Da had even gone off-planet with the Lord Regent, but Delia had been very young then. What's more frequent is someone calling when Da's at home. Da and Mama are the only ones allowed to use the secure line; Delia wasn't even allowed in the room where it is until she was fourteen. Someone would call and Da would lock himself in the office for an hour before leaving to go back to Headquarters for the night. Sometimes the call would be for Mama and then Mama would go to the Residence, but she would always be home a few hours later. Mama, Delia has always privately thought, is that much better at resolving emergencies than Da is. Yes, she knows the nature of their emergencies are different, but... well, Mama always came home faster.

Once a semester, Mama goes off to be an instructor in Captain Illyan's advanced course. This used to be because Negri wanted to teach cadets that a woman can beat them up. Illyan still does it, even though there are more women with that sort of security clearance who can beat up cadets, to prove to cadets, too, that somebody's _mother_ can beat them up.

But that's planned. If this one was planned, no one told their darling daughters.

"What do you think it is this time?" Olivia asks over the pancakes.

"I'll bet something to do with ImpSec," Delia says.

"Your Captain Galeni slipping you information?" Olivia asks.

Delia scowls. " _No_. But Laisa says that ImpSec's been on high alert lately."

"And _she_ knows, how?" Martya asks.

"She's Komarran," Delia says in a tone that indicates her sisters are very stupid. "She'll notice ImpSec being nervous a long time before we will. It's a matter of habit and self-preservation."

 

\---

 

Whatever's happening with ImpSec, it goes from low-level annoyance to high-level headache to full-blown threat in the time it takes for Laisa to walk to work in the morning and notice that she's feeling much more paranoid this morning.

Even the Barrayarans out on the street are looking concerned, but that's being much too Komarran about it, Laisa thinks guiltily. They've had a much longer history with the Vor than the Komarrans have. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the Komarrans as the Barrayarans's punching bag, but the truth is, they have a homegrown punching bag and have for centuries. They just do what they do to Komarr for the _variety_. But if they just want to blow off steam, they don't need to go wormhole jumping for it. It's right there in their cluster. No, Laisa corrects, this is Barrayar. It's in their backyard.

Duv comes by after work for their usual cup of coffee and dessert and it must be much worse than even what Laisa feared because Duv hasn't changed out of his uniform. It must be terrible if Duv can't risk anyone insinuating that he's trying to be incognito, attempting to pass as a civilian and collude with fellow Komarrans about some plot. If he has to stand tall and loudly proclaim himself one of the secret police, daring anyone to say he can't visit who he pleases, this has probably gotten to the level of terrible that means that it's much too late for Laisa to be planning an emergency trip home. They might not let her off the planet at this point.

Laisa brings out a chess set from home and they barely talk the entire night, the only sounds being the taps as the pieces move and the sounds of two people, both desperately trying to pretend that nothing's wrong when, in truth, _everything_ is.

 

\---

 

Delia's the first one in her family to go to university. She'd always known she would be -- by the time she was old enough to pay attention to her parents's assumptions about her future, Tante Cordelia had already won them over so thoroughly that they were her biggest supporters. Some of the girls she'd gone to university with had had to fight it out with their parents to be able to attend, but Delia never had.

Her mother had advanced training and was one of Gregor's bodyguards and they don't give you that if you can't think on your feet, but Mama says the most dangerous thing, as far as she's concerned, is a woman who isn't ashamed of being better than men at something, no matter what it is. And that Delia should always strive to be as dangerous as possible.

As a life philosophy, it's been working pretty well.

And Da went to one of the military colleges in Vorpatril's District and that was something, but it wasn't a real university. Even Da will be the first one to admit that. It taught him to be an officer, but not a very good one, and it didn't teach him much more than that. Da always says that it was the Lord Regent who _really_ taught him to be an officer. All the District college did was teach him to be cannon fodder. That's not a legacy he wants to leave anyone, least of all letting it shadow Delia's and, after her, her sisters's accomplishments.

So. She's the first Koudelka and the first Droushnakovi to go to university. That means something. That counts for something. It counts for a lot.

When she had gotten in, her uncles had sent her all sorts of presents to celebrate, and they've been as eager as anyone to hear about Delia's grades.

And Delia had done well and she'd worked herself as hard as possible, because she's the first and that _means_ something, and she wouldn't let herself be the first Koudelka to fail out of university. So she didn't and she put her nose to the stone and succeeded and found her niche and learned how wonderful it could all be.

Laisa can't understand what that's like. That's clear by the time Delia's only at the middle of the story, about how she'd also applied to the Imperial Science Institute only to decide on the Vorbarra District Agricultural and Engineering Institute in the end because it had more breadth for her to explore. Laisa has a very supportive look on her face, and she's listening attentively, but she doesn't get it. She can't understand what it means.

"It's like Duv Galeni going to the Academy," she says, stopping abruptly in the middle of the story. "That's what it's like. It's momentous and it's scary and everyone is staring at you because what if you fail? So you can't fail. You spend your entire time working yourself to the bone because you _can't_ fail, because if you fail, things are going to fall apart and it'll be your fault. So you can't fail. Because too much people are counting on you to not fail. Too much relies on you."

"It was different for Duv, of course," Delia says. "It's not the same thing as a Komarran in the Academy with Barrayarans, but it's that kind of pressure, everyone looking at you. In my case, no one was going to make an assumption about every prole girl if I couldn't make it, but it wouldn't have looked good. It wasn't that Delia failed, it would have been that Commodore Koudelka's daughter did. I couldn't let him down, and I couldn't let my mother down, or Tante Cordelia, or anyone. And I wanted it, yes, of course, because it's _my_ life and at the end of the day, I'm the one who has to live with it and with my choices and with my successes and my failures, but they were all behind me. It would have looked bad for them if I couldn't make it. I wasn't just myself. I was all of them, too."

"Like I am on Barrayar," Laisa nods. "I'm carrying my entire planet with me."

 

\---

 

It's a sunny day today and it's beautiful, with the sun reflecting off of the snow and the winter landscape looking nearly like home. They don't have dome-glare here, naturally, but this is coming close. Laisa never thought she'd be homesick or nostalgic for the most common cause of chronic headaches and eye strain back home, but here she is.

It's Duv's off-duty day and Delia's coming over, too. Laisa had offered to play tour guide for once, show her native guide something she's not seen before in her hometown, and Duv should like it, too.

They start out at Laisa's apartment. It's outside entertainment and she'd warned them about that in advance. Delia's wearing a thick stylish coat of her preferred blue and Duv's dressed warmly in his standard issue coat. Laisa's wearing the new one that she'd bought with Delia and Martya last week. It's surprisingly warm for being thin. She's used to long-term-use outdoor gear having to be bulky, but that must be just a Komarran thing. When you're protecting yourself from the elements back home, that's much different than protecting yourself from the elements here. And Komarrans want that barrier. They want to be reassured that there's something there. The Barrayarans don't need it, but Barrayarans take air for granted.

Laisa takes them first to an old square a few blocks away that might have been a town square before Vorbarr Sultana swallowed up all of the small towns on this side of the river. There's a friendly restaurant on the second floor of a building. The downstairs space is broken up into a lot of different shops. Laisa hadn't noticed the upstairs -- it _is_ true, she thinks ruefully, Komarrans _never look up_ \-- until she'd been here for four months.

She'd been standing on the other side of the street and suddenly noticed that there was an old marble facade on the upper floors of the brick building. The first floor is different shop entrances and she'd noticed it was one building, but she hadn't thought too much about it. Each store's entrance looks distinct. But the upstairs... the upstairs has an elegant look to it. There are carvings in the marble and it alone is a gorgeous work of art. It's a shame it's not on street-level where everyone can see it easily, and shame on whoever it was who must have removed it from the bottom level when they put in the shops.

The facade goes up for two floors and each floor, on either side, has a set-in balcony. It reminded her so much of home, where you can't have jutting balconies for safety reasons, but here it might have been for privacy or style. These balconies are carved in an oval shape and have enough room in each of them for a small table, seating four. 

In warmer weather, those private ceilinged balconies are wonderful places to eat. Once the winter came, Laisa had been sure those balconies would be closed for the winter, but instead, the owners had put in glass windows between the ceiling and the balcony railing.

Laisa's reserved her preferred balcony, the upper floor one on the right. It gets the best view of this part of Vorbarr Sultana. You can see the river and, if you look down at the square, you have an unparalleled view of all of the antique signs. Laisa's favorite is an old one, etched in stone, that says Rona's Furs. It's above a shoe repair store, but Laisa had once asked the proprietor about the old sign and gotten a wonderful story about the old store and how the sign was part of the town history and a landmark; no one would ever think of taking it down.

After lunch, Laisa takes them over one more block to the sculpture garden.

 

\---

 

"Have you ever thought about the future?" Duv asks, his hands stuffed into his pockets.

"Little else, usually," Laisa says, surprised. "Why, have I seemed too fixed on the past?" She smiles wanly. "A little dangerous for a Komarran on Barrayar. Keep looking ahead and pretend you don't notice when the winds change." A very Barrayaran phrase. Nothing she would have said before coming here. One of the good things, she thinks. She's lost and she's gained, and one things she's gained is more words to describe the way things can be fine one moment and fall apart the next.

Back home, they'd call it -- she would have said, _pretend you don't notice when Vorkosigan steals the Soletta_. Something else she could only have said at home. Here, who knows what they would do.

"No, nothing of the sort," Duv says. He looks nervous.

Laisa puts a hand on his shoulder. "What happened?" she asks gently.

Duv pulls back suddenly, with a look of alarm on his face. He exhales and his muscles relax, but for a moment, Laisa had seen _him_. Captain Duv Galeni. So that's what he looks like.

"I can't talk about my career," Duv says, "you know that, I've told you that, and I don't think you would want to hear it."

Something is going on, then, Laisa realizes with a sinking feeling. It had been nagging at her, the way ImpSec had been looking the last week or two. Strained. Stressed. Like Duv looked the day before Admiral Vorkosigan's full recovery was announced. Like Duv looks now. Something's going on, Duv knows all about it, and it's going to be bad.

"Everything's fine at work," Laisa offers as a subject change, because this isn't the first time Duv's reflexes have snapped out and Laisa's his friend. He's forgiven her for her temper, too. They're a lot alike. It's why they understand each other. She'll forgive him for that, and she'll change the subject from whatever he was unsuccessfully trying to talk around. "We're working on language for a revised trade agreement with New Tertius. And I'm going to meet Delia's parents next week. She's more nervous about it than I am."

Duv doesn't say anything and Laisa stares at him. Usually, when ImpSec speaks through Duv's mouth, it's over as soon as Duv realizes it's happened. This one must have shaken him harder, she thinks.

"Delia's nervous because she's never done this, I think," she continues. "But I've met a girlfriend's family before and been scrutinized like only a Komarran can do. I don't think a Barrayaran Commodore is going to be any worse than Margaret's parents were, who made me send them all of my recent essays just so they could judge in advance if I was good enough for her. I passed," she adds.

"I hadn't," Duv says hoarsely, "realized you and Delia were-- were that serious. Congratulations."

"Thank you," Laisa says. "I haven't met her parents yet, so I know Barrayarans wouldn't think it was serious yet, but she's getting it all ready." It suddenly occurs to her that Duv might know Delia's father. He's a Commodore at Imperial Service Headquarters, although Laisa doesn't know much more than that about him. "Did you ever work with Commodore Koudelka? Do you know what I should expect?"

Duv clearly takes a moment to think about that. Probably thinking through what's classified and what isn't. "He seems the type not to mind having a Komarran daughter-in-law," Duv finally settles on. "His youngest daughter is studying on Beta Colony with Lord Mark Vorkosigan. So he, ah, doesn't have anti-galactic sensibilities."

"He wasn't with the invasion, was he?" Laisa asks. It would necessarily mean anything if he was; she knows how the invasion was treated on Barrayar. They'd all wanted to go. They'd all been eager for a war. But that's Barrayarans. Always eager to kill.

"I think he might have been too young," Duv says. "He served with Admiral Vorkosigan before Escobar, but I don't know how long before. But he wasn't at Escobar, he was injured beforehand."

Laisa had already known that Commodore Koudelka was one of Admiral Vorkosigan's men. He was involved in putting down the Revolt, if nothing else. But he's a member of the Barrayaran military. The most Laisa can expect is someone who doesn't hate all Komarrans on sight. But she doesn't have the kind of emotional investment in meeting the parents that Barrayarans must have. Barrayaran marriages are uniting two families completely. When Komarrans do that, they have contracts to define all the terms. Komarran mergers have to be negotiated. But Barrayaran marriages are like any Barrayaran oath: quick and even the more binding because of how easy it is to do.

But the Barrayarans don't think it's too easy. Their words mean more to them. But trusting a Barrayaran's word had gotten the Komarran Senate massacred. Laisa is understandably cynical about how serious Barrayarans actually take it, not just how much they declare they take it.

It's important to Delia. But if Delia's family doesn't like Laisa, it's not as concerning to Laisa as it is to Delia. Laisa's close to her family, but if her family had reservations about her partner, she would listen to them, but she wouldn't allow her choices to be changed by them. But Barrayaran family units are different. Family approval means so much more here.

 

\---

 

It's not that Team Koudelka have a policy, per se, of avoiding each other in the university district. It's only that they're in such different fields of study and their paths don't usually cross, even where the campuses between their universities overlap. When they do cross, it's usually intentional.

Today, Olivia's cheeks are flushed and she looks thrilled and excited and it can't be the Greek language exam she's been studying for and stressing out over that's making her look like this.

And she wants nothing more than to talk about what Delia's been up to, which is doubly suspicious. Delia pries, gently, but Olivia won't speak a word of it, just grins and grins and is completely smug and happy about something.

If Delia didn't know her, she'd think she just had sex. But even Olivia wouldn't do that in the middle of the university campus and the middle of the day. At least, Delia hopes she wouldn't. It would be so embarrassing. And, sure, the duty of the little sister is to embarrass the older one, but there's embarrassing and then there's her little sister having sex on campus. That's beyond embarrassing and out to the other side of _probably illegal and if it's not, it should be_. It's not that Delia's a prude, but this is Olivia. Olivia delights in shocking them all. It's not just her sisterly duty. She considers it her calling.

 

\---

 

"My sisters all are stupidly overprotective and used to being the tallest person in the room," Delia says. "It gives you a certain psychological boost on this planet, trust me."

"So they'll like that I'm short?" Laisa asks, amused.

"They're going to think you're threatening enough," Delia apologizes. "Smart Komarran woman-- they can see that you're someone to be serious about. You have, uh, don't take this the wrong way, but you have intellectual heft."

Laisa bursts out laughing.

"You're taking it wrong!" Delia swats her arm. "You're very educated, you have a career, you're a _galactic_. This is completely different from Martya bringing home everyone in her class for a free meal or two and calling them her dates to guilt Da into being nice to them. Okay, she might have actually been dating one or two of them, but that's not the point, stop laughing."

Laisa closes her mouth and tries to nod solemnly. She fails. "They're going to think I'm too good for you, is that it?"

"They're going to see you as a threat to the status quo," Delia says. "Which my parents aren't going to like, because my father has only slightly gotten used to the idea that I have political opinions of my own. He is _not_ used to the idea that all of his girls have grown up and that we're having sex -- which we are not telling him, but Kareen's on Beta Colony, and she's the baby, so he might have gotten an inkling by now that we're not all still actually babies."

 

\---

 

Madame Koudelka was the Emperor's bodyguard in his childhood and had played a major role in the end of the Pretendership.

When Laisa meets her, Laisa's on her best "meeting the board" manners. From Madame Koudelka's reaction, Laisa isn't sure if that was a good choice or not. She might be coming off too polished or professional, not personal enough. She doesn't know what makes a good match from a Barrayaran perspective. Laisa's the Toscane heiress. She has a clean gene scan. She can provide for a family. But she and Delia aren't anywhere near that in their relationship, they haven't really even discussed it. They're still getting to know each other.

So Laisa isn't sure what sort of impression she needs to be making here. Probably to assuage any concern that Laisa would be trying to recruit Delia and her connections for anything nefarious having to do with Komarr.

 

Watching the Koudelka sisters practice fighting is, Laisa should never tell them, the sort of thing people would pay good money for. It's a master class, she means, but it's also three beautiful women demonstrating how deadly and dangerous they can be. It's stunning.

Delia had invited her to see this as a chance for her to get to know her sisters better and Laisa had jumped at it because she'd thought it would help get Delia's sisters to see that she's someone who doesn't mean them any harm. Look, she's coming to see them demonstrate how thoroughly they can beat somebody up. It's an object lesson without being a physical one, too. This is Laisa saying, 'I'm not a threat', and the Koudelka sisters saying, 'good, but in case you got any ideas, let us dissuade you of them immediately'.

All in all, it's a good trade.

After the sisters finish, they chat happily to each other as they stretch. Laisa brings over her peace offering of sandwiches from that restaurant in the caravanserai that Delia had showed her. Martya and Olivia give her genuine smiles, which Laisa returns widely. So she passed the test? She hopes so. She has no idea how sisters manage their interactions with each other in general, but she'll jump through whatever hoops she has to so that Delia's family can get comfortable with Delia dating a strange Komarran woman who hasn't even been on this planet a year.

 

"I wasn't that bad," Delia says defensively.

"Oh, you so were," Martya says. "This is well-deserved payback. Remember when I brought Daniil home? You were at your _worst_ over-protective-older-sister mode. It took Ma and Olivia to make him feel like he wasn't going to walk out of there with his head in a shopping bag. And then the second time Daniil came over, you tore his thesis to shreds."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Laisa starts.

Martya waves her hand at her. "His _actual_ thesis. She really ripped it to shreds."

"Oh my," Laisa says, smiling slightly. "That sounds horrible."

"And then when Kareen asked him during dinner to please explain his topic to her again, it sounded _fascinating_ , he nearly wet himself at what my _other_ over-protective sister was going to do. Thankfully, when Olivia says she doesn't care, she actually doesn't! And she doesn't take the opportunity to torment anyone I bring home."

"I liked Daniil," Olivia interjects from the corner. "He was scared of Delia. Sensible boy. And scared of Kareen, even more sensible."

"And then he got scared off," Delia finishes for Martya, who is looking exasperated yet long-suffering. "Because the Koudelkas en masse are terrifying. Koudelka sisters: 1, chances of our sister marrying before she graduates: 0. And we're all very sorry," she says, obviously reciting something she agreed to under severe sisterly duress, "and we won't do it again, although you can't blame us for Daniil. You barely liked him."

"I could stand him," Martya sulks. "And he could stand me. We could have had a wonderful future together of mutual-tolerance. And you ruined it."

"If the best thing you can say about him is that you could stand him," Laisa starts delicately, "maybe your sisters did you a favor?"

"If I want them to do me favors, I'll ask, thanks," Martya says.

Laisa flinches slightly and Delia puts her hand on her shoulder. "Hey," she says to Martya, a clear warning in her voice. "Back off."

"It's all right," Laisa says. "I'm sorry, Martya."

"Laisa doesn't have sisters," Delia says, still glaring at her sister. "So this whole thing is more Barrayaran weirdness to her. All right? And we do not bite tourists. It's not polite."

"Yes, Delia," Martya grumbles, but seems to accept that.

 

\---

 

When ImpSec is nervous, they like to spread it around. Laisa thinks she can feel their suspicious gazes as she enters the consortium's building. If something's going on that's making ImpSec deliberately not panic, then the building's more monitored than usual. Everything here is going to find its way back to those scurrying men in the bowels of that forbidding fortress.

 _Duv is there_ , she thinks, but that doesn't help. Duv turned collaborator too early on. She can't trust him to break through ImpSec conditioning -- no, ImpSec _training_ \-- and not jump at shadows and end up trampling all over Komarrans. He probably won't mean to do it. But he's one man inside the machine. He can't hold back a sandstorm.

Not for the first time, Laisa finds herself staring wistfully over towards the embassies four streets away. If Komarr were considered an equal, not a vassal, she would have embassy protections. On Barrayar, she has her position and her luck and, maybe, a friend in ImpSec. One friend in ImpSec, against a whole army of them. 

Duv says he can make a difference there and Laisa thinks, _Duv, if there's ever a time for you to make a difference, it's right now._

Joanna comes by around lunch time to bring Laisa a warm drink and a friendly smile and a stack of harmless gossip just to rub it in the faces of the silent ImpSec listeners just how normal everyone is, how non-fazed they all are, and how they can all take their surveillance and shove it out of dome. Laisa does her best to help maintain the fiction.

 

\---

 

"It's Illyan," Joanna says one night, just the two of them out to dinner alone. "That's what has ImpSec like this. Something's happened to Illyan. No one knows what, but it's finally gotten out, is how I heard it. Which means it's all been Illyan this time. Not Cetagandans sneaking around, not even home-grown problems. Something's happened to Illyan. You'd think it if was an assassination attempt, the crackdowns would have been worse. We would have known sooner. But what else could have happened to him?"

When Laisa sees Delia the next day, Delia looks worried and Laisa has to remind herself that Delia's known Captain Illyan her entire life. He's not the dread Chief of ImpSec to her, he's a friend of her father's. Laisa doesn't think she's ever going to get used to this. And that's good. She'd be terrified if she thought she would. Is that how Duv feels all the time? It must be. It must be how Duv must feel all the time, surrounded by so many men whose names are anathema back home. And Duv's name is becoming one of them, and that can't be helping Duv's piece of mind either.

"I'm sorry," Delia says and she does actually sound sorry, which is a marvel and a revelation. "I couldn't tell anyone."

"I understand," Laisa says.

"It's not that you're a Komarran!" Delia continues even though Laisa hadn't said anything about it. Delia looks miserable. "I really couldn't tell anyone. And I can't tell any details that I know--"

"I wasn't asking," Laisa interrupts.

"I _know_ ," Delia says, "and don't you get that that's worse? You should be asking details! You should be able to get them! It's just ImpSec. No one knows anything, so no one is allowed to say anything. It could just be age, but they never miss an opportunity to make me feel like a terrible person for not being able to tell my girlfriend what's bothering me."

"Why would it be age?" Laisa asks mystified. "He's younger than my father. If it's not illness, of course they think it's an assassination attempt." It's ImpSec. Even if it is illness, they'd probably still think it's an assassination attempt. Some evil microbes snuck in and sabotaged ImpSec. It could never be anything else.

Delia blinks, also mystified. "Laisa," she starts. "You're forgetting we're Barrayarans again. Our life expectancies aren't that long. Illyan's _old_. Okay, not that old, Captain Negri was older, I think, but Illyan's in his sixties. He's been looking to retire and grooming a replacement, not entering his prime, like Komarrans and Betans do at that age."

The dread Illyan, brought low by age? At _sixty_? Yes, Admiral Vorkosigan had heart problems last year, but everyone knows Admiral Vorkosigan never had a heart to begin with. 

"Who's Illyan's replacement?" Laisa asks.

"Well, no one officially that anyone knows about," Delia says. "Gregor would have to pick someone eventually, I guess. But Illyan's second-in-command has taken over for now. Haroche. He's... not Illyan," Delia says delicately. Laisa has no idea what she means by that. He doesn't have a memory chip? He's not the bogeyman? "But, then, who would be? It would be hard enough following Illyan," Delia continues, "I guess Haroche should be glad we're not in any crisis right now, other than Illyan collapsing. Can you imagine if we were in any real trouble right now?"

"Yes," Laisa says flatly.

Delia flushes deep red. "Sorry, sorry! Of course you can. I didn't mean--," Delia tugs at her hair in frustration and then folds her hands in her laps, twisting her fingers together. "I'm sorry, I'm not fit for company, as Lady Alys might say, although I can't imagine Lady Alys ever saying that. She's always poised and knows exactly what to say and how. She's never flustered, or if she ever is, she never lets anyone see it. And I don't know how she does it."

Delia's worried about a family friend. And any other family friend and Laisa would try to be sympathetic, would offer to help, but she can't make the leap. She can't make herself concerned about Illyan. But she rubs Delia's shoulder. She can be concerned about how Delia feels without having to care about Simon Illyan. She can want to offer comfort to her girlfriend completely outside of anything having to do with ImpSec.

 

\---

 

The tension has to break sometime. It has to. Laisa remembers times like this from when she was very young. Everyone on edge, waiting for the bang, waiting for the pounding on the door. Her parents had both been arrested several times and Laisa had been there for one of them; they hadn't managed to pass her off on a 'play date' to a trusted friend in time.

Laisa had grown up to love Barrayar as a planet, but the complicated favor to loving Barrayar was always the Barrayarans. And you can't have one without the other. You can't have the vast scenery, the gorgeous landscapes, the architecture, the food, the history, the culture, without having Barrayarans. And they created all of that before they ever knew about Komarr, but it's what contributed to what they did to Komarr. She loves Barrayar, what it is, what it offers, but she can't ignore that.

Since the amnesty, it has mostly been an intellectual price. But with the tensions rising, with Illyan being ill, with Duv being on edge... Laisa's worried. Because she remembers this from her childhood. She remembers this from the end of the Revolt. And she's scared.

She wants to go home.

She likes Barrayar, but not like this. This is like the worst of her childhood, drudging up memories Laisa hadn't even realized she still had.

So when Delia invites her to go on a short vacation, Laisa eagerly accepts. She probably can't leave the planet, but she can certainly leave the capital. It will be a beautiful escape, she thinks.

 

\---

 

Delia's family has a second house on the coast, a place to go on vacations. Winter on the sea shore is a sight to see and Laisa stands on the enclosed porch and takes a deep breath of sea air. It smells amazing out here and the scenery is so dramatically different from home. Now this is Barrayar. This is what makes the planet so beautiful. You can find cities everywhere, but views like this are so rare. It's harsh and dramatic and forlorn and it can kill you if you're not careful. It's everything Barrayar is and more.

The waves are crashing violently on the shore and there's a storm raging. It's like standing in the middle of a maelstrom, but not having to worry about being blown away, being able to just enjoy the artistry of nature. She can't get this at home. This alone, if nothing else, was worth coming to Barrayar for, for the stark beauty of this, for the sheer power of the storm, for the water and the wind and the smell of the sea.

Delia wraps her arms around Laisa from behind and Laisa leans back, resting her head against Delia's shoulder.

"You're amazing," Delia whispers. "You have to know how amazing you are."

"There are a million just like me back home," Laisa says, distracted by the view.

"On Barrayar, you're fresh air," Delia says insistently, refusing to let it go.

Laisa watches as the storm toys with some driftwood and thinks about how weird it is, the way people phrase things. Back home, that would be a breath of mask air, probably. A breath of fresh air isn't anything you'd want to have. "Thank you," she says.

The house itself is something to behold as well. There's a wall with pebbles pressed into it and Laisa had skimmed her fingers down them, appreciating the smoothness of the rocks against the roughness of the wall. Water had worn down this rock, sent it to shore, and then someone had collected it and turned it into a wall. There's nothing like this at home. Nothing at all.

Back home, they've built from the native stone and the native soil, but there's no native wood to build a house like this. There's no sea to wear down stone until it shines like glass.

Coming to Barrayar was worth it for this alone, Laisa thinks. It was worth it to stand in this alien, beautiful landscape with a woman she's growing to love. It was worth all the pain. It was worth all the worry. This right here. This makes it all worth it.

But they can't escape what's waiting for them back in the capital.

 

"My entire life, things have been getting better," Delia says quietly.

"My entire life," Laisa counters, equally as quietly, "things have been getting worse."

"I can't even imagine--"

"Don't," Laisa says. "Your worse compared to mine..."

"We have further to go," Delia agrees. "That doesn't mean what we did to you, your planet, wasn't really awful. Because it was horrible. And I don't want it to sound like I don't know that, or that I think Komarr somehow _deserved_ what we did, because that's stupid revisionist history, the Vor justifying their barbarity, and where have proles heard that before, except, oh, everywhere? We know how bad the Vor can be, so we're not going to pretend that the Vor were magically better to Komarr than they were to anyone."

"It wasn't just the Vor," Laisa says, because so long as they're _talking_ about this.

Delia nods, frowning. "Oh, I know that, too. My father wasn't at Komarr," she says, "but it's not as if it would change things if he was, because he was on the Regent's staff during the Revolt, so if you're going to hate me for that, you would already."

"I wouldn't," Laisa starts.

Delia smiles immediately in relief, but she can't have been concerned. Surely nothing Laisa's done would make Delia think she needs to be concerned. Laisa wouldn't have come to this planet if she didn't know that everyone and their father thought the conquest of Komarr had been laudable. "Thank you. I-- well, I'm not going to try to tell people how to feel about the Vor fucking them over, because that's just being part of the problem. I see the Vor close up all the time. They have some redeeming qualities," she qualifies, loyally, "but that doesn't mean some of them aren't horrible bastards who've gotten away with murder and worse. Because that's just more revisionist history and the Vor are masters of that, so let's not encourage it by helping them along. They've had help, they don't need more."

 

"That's part of what Olivia's thesis is about, actually," Delia says. "How the Vor system actually works. You can't deny that it does work. You may want it to work _differently_ \-- I certainly often wish it would -- but it does work. It works for them and it works _against_ them, too, occasionally. And how it all fits together, that can be really fascinating. It's nothing I'd want to spend my time digging into, but that's because I'd rather look forward than backwards. Uh, by fascinating, I mean there's a difference between fascinating and _laudable_ , because just because I find it interesting to consider in abstract doesn't mean I want to perpetuate it. Because I don't. It's interesting, but it would be more interesting if it were in pieces. But while it works, it's a good thing to study, to see how it all fits together. It's for history, Olivia might say," Delia finishes. "So, uh, we can help _make_ it history."

Laisa turns around by instinct, and Delia reaches out and touches her arm. "I hope I'm not being too forward," Delia says. "And if you want to run, yeah, now might be a good time. But would you honestly like me as much if I were some Barrayaran woman who was happy with the status quo and didn't want to see it change? If I were the Barrayaran woman of the propaganda holovids, who is happy to wait for her soldier to sweep her off her feet? I would rather _not_ be swept. I would rather keep my feet on the floor and my eyes looking towards what's in front of me. And what's in front of all of us. We have to change things. But peacefully!" She adds quickly as Laisa pulls back again. "I swear, this isn't some kind of trap."

"You grew up with the _Emperor_ ," Laisa gets out through gritted teeth.

"Only sort of!" Delia says. "And what makes you think he doesn't agree?"

Laisa freezes.

"Gregor knows things have to change," Delia says in a rush. "You think he doesn't? He doesn't live in that much of a sheltered palace. He can read the wind, too. But he can't act openly. Think like a Barrayaran for a moment -- sorry, I don't mean to be cruel. But, um, think like someone who _likes_ things the way things are now. If the Emperor stood up and declared, like the dictator that, yes, he is, but if he dictated some changes, a couple Counts would go into _open revolt_."

Komarr might like that, and Delia apparently can read that look on Laisa's face because she looks delighted for a moment, like her suspicions have been confirmed.

"Yes, _of course_ you're not brainwashed, of course you want Komarr to be rid of Barrayar--"

"Not with bloodshed," Laisa adds even quicker than Delia, because that needs to be gotten out into the air between them.

"You think I'd have given you a second date if you _wanted_ Komarr in open revolt?" Delia scoffs. "No, of course not. Komarr and Barrayar need to get along, and somehow, we need to get things to change without falling into open war again. That's why the Emperor can't stand up before the Counts tomorrow and order them to change. It doesn't work that way. Such a shame, I know. It would be so much easier, yes. But it just can't happen. That's why we have to pull things apart carefully and quietly and, above all, without the Counts having any idea that it's going on. Things need to change, but we don't want a war to change them. War's uncontrollable. This, by necessity, _must_ be as controlled as possible. Of course it can't all be controlled, not even half the time, but it's much more controllable than war, don't you think?"

"A quiet revolution," Laisa says.

"A civil campaign," Delia agrees. "Marching through history on cat's feet. Never drawing a sword, but forcing the changes nevertheless. Because it's necessary and it's long past time. Barrayar needs it, and Komarr needs it to happen, and so does Sergyar, if it's not going to become another battleground."

"Somehow I doubt that's in Olivia's thesis," Laisa says.

Delia shrugs. "Well, no. I think she picked it mostly because she was contemplating marrying Vor and wanted to be clear on what she might be in for. But you can extrapolate from what she does have, and it's not like this isn't typical dining room conversation in my house. We're too Vor-adjacent to see the Vor like you probably do, but we're still proles. My sisters and I, we could marry Vor and become Vor that way, but it's not like my dad could ever become Vor. That can be impossible to forget sometimes. Everyone's spent the last fifty years or whatever trying to make the Vor not matter. But the Vor still do matter. And the Emperor, for one, is someone who wants to make that stop."

"But he's at the top of it. Why would he want it to stop?"

"I think he can see it better from the top. He's got the best view. He knows what's stacked up underneath him. If even he wants it to change, it's probably worse than anyone else knows."

 

"We need to find a way to stop the Vor machine and pull it apart for parts and scrap metal without the entire Imperium falling. That's the most important thing. No chaos. My father always says, Barrayar's tried chaos and we didn't like the taste. And then we get drunk to forget it and wake up in worse tyranny than before. My mother says that we almost settled for Vordarian. She knows, she was there. It was really close, closer than the official histories will tell you, because no one wants to admit that Barrayar nearly let that happen, nearly let a usurper win because it was better than the alternative, which was anarchy and chaos and another Vor civil war that could tear the planet apart. But my parents are proles. The Vor are somewhat interchangeable for them, especially back then, when my parents both had commanding officers, had patrons, who were Vor. My sister's named after Princess Kareen, after all. But my parents never loved the Vor the way the Vor love themselves. We're proles. Who sits in the Imperial Residence matters, but not as much as it does to the Vorkosigans. It's never going to matter to us as much as it does to them. My mother helped raise Gregor, so she's personally loyal to him from that, but she never had that loyalty to Ezar that any Vor will claim to have."

 

"Who does the daughter of the Emperor's favorite former bodyguard report to, if not the Emperor himself?"

And Laisa has no answer to that. Can think of no answer to that.

"Everyone thinks I want to grow up to be Lady Alys Vorpatril. Most people just don't think too hard about what that means. And some think it means I want to marry Lord Ivan. Ew, no. He's like an obnoxious older brother. Lady Alys is the most powerful woman in the capital. And her power goes beyond the superficial. She's a very fundamental example of how knowledge _is_ power. She is in the center of an intelligence network -- what some people might disparagingly call _women's gossip_ \-- and therefore she has immense power. Even I was surprised when I started really seeing it, just how much can be accomplished through the power Lady Alys has, and I didn't go into this thinking I would find out that even _I_ was underestimating her reach. I didn't mean to, but I-- well, that's why it's so good at being undercover. Even women undervalue women's work."

 

"Most people, if you would ask, would say Lady Alys's most direct power is that she's the one who has the first and final say over who Gregor's bride is. She vets every woman let into his presence -- yes, dear, even you -- and if she disapproved of his choice, it wouldn't be his choice for very long. She's one of the few people who could give Gregor an outright veto on his choice. I can't imagine under what circumstances she would, though. But she _could_ and Gregor would have to give in. That's very obviously _real_ power, and even the worst of the Counts would have to acknowledge that. But there's much more subtle and even some more outright and direct ways she can have control of and influence over important matters. And that's all without being able to cast a vote in the Counts herself."

"It would be easier," Laisa says, "if she could cast a vote in the Counts herself."

Delia allows that with a shrug. "That's not something that's going to happen in my lifetime. But even Komarr doesn't have straight democracy. You have voting shares."

"Komarran voting shares are structured the way they are because of the need to terraform the planet," Laisa says. They'd chosen the planet for the wormholes, but they would never have stayed if they didn't think they could turn the planet into something, make it worth the sweat and the blood to make it that way. They'd farmed the wormholes because they couldn't farm the soil, and so that one day they _could_ farm the soil. And even after centuries, doing what they could, they were still reliant on trade for nearly everything. The only natural resource Komarr has are the people. "We had to make sure we didn't too look far into the stars and forget about the ground under our feet. That's why the founders decided that who has a say in how the terraforming goes, and therefore the entire future of the planet, are the ones who actually participate. You'll always have people who want to complain, but not do anything. The founders said, if you complain about the problem, you're volunteering to fix it, and to compensate you, you'll keep being able to contribute to the discussion. But you have to help fix it. Or you're just talk. All air, no breath. We don't have the atmosphere for that kind of waste of air. But you Barrayarans came to feudalism through--" Laisa shakes her head. "You also had to terraform. But you had wars. You needed fealty to stay alive."

"We were fighting the planet as much as each other," Delia says. "And we didn't have the ability to escape into space, or import most of our food. We turned toward each other and our system grew out of it. But like anything that grows, sometimes it needs to be pruned. And you can't force the growth too much or the entire organism dies. It's a balancing act. Gregor can't unilaterally change everything. He has to be a gardener. He has to coax it along."


	6. Chapter 6

Ivan's birthday coincides with the annual celebration of the end of the Pretendership. This time, because of the Koudelka family connection, Delia has her own invitation with the ability to bring her own guest.

"Would you like to come?" she asks Laisa. "It's going to be fun." She's not sure, even now, how Laisa had really felt about her first trip to the Imperial Residence. Delia has a lifetime of experience of exposure to Gregor and to Imperial ceremony; she's spent her life in and around it all. But Laisa might have felt, walking into the Residence, the way Delia might feel walking into a Komarran shareholder's boardroom. Even if she's invited, even if she has good reason to be there, it's probably still something you have to get used to.

But there's been time for Laisa to make that adjustment, and it would be _great_ to have Laisa come along to this. Delia wouldn't be able to stop smiling for days if she could have Laisa Toscane on her arm.

And even if that would be an outrageous display, _Delia_ would still know that Laisa was there as her date and not simply as a friend.

 

Duv, a rising officer, receives a personal invitation as well, which surprises him. Delia, the expert on these matters, smiles only a little. "It's all down to security," she says. "It's easier to get in once you've been in. You've already been vetted by security and once you've done something once, it's less shocking to do it again, and it diminishes exponentially every time. I'll bet in a year, Duv not being invited to something like this would be the real shock, some kind of snub about Komarrans or about loyalties."

Rising officers get invited to these things, Delia goes on to explain to Laisa, because it's all about society and therefore all about getting married and all about getting the promising military officers the most advantageous marriages, and getting the older generation that kind of marriage control over the younger ones. It used to be, you couldn't court someone until their parents approved, and these kinds of things were one way to ensure that the parents did approve. If you danced together at the Emperor's birthday or Winterfair, that was good enough to keep going on.

 

And it's perfectly acceptable for Laisa to attend as Duv's date. "Didn't you notice you were getting invitations?" Delia asks curiously. "After you danced with the Emperor at a state dinner, I'm sure you got some. People are curious. Gregor rarely dances with anyone twice. It leads to gossip and speculation and, well, the woman getting a lot of invitations so everyone can look her over and judge her and come to a decision on if they approve of her or not as the next Empress. Everyone's very good at that. They've been doing it since Gregor was sixteen, Lady Alys says."

Suspect her to be a candidate to be _Empress_? That's absurd. There's no way anyone would look at the Emperor dancing with Laisa and come to that conclusion. "But I'm Komarran," Laisa objects. "They must know better." Thinking she was trying to seduce him for political gain, maybe. But marriage? Out of the question.

"You received invitations?" Duv asks, like that's the important point in this conversation, which it isn't. _Men._

"I have no idea," Laisa says. "If I did, they went to the Shippers Syndicate, and everyone there would have considered it a joke in exceedingly poor taste. Which it would have been. Imagine me as Empress!"

"Could be worse, could be Martya," Delia says cryptically, and then she shrugs. "Don't underestimate rumor and gossip. They can make the most absurd things sound not only possible, but inevitable. But, the point is, Gregor danced with you. That, in the way the minds of the court work, means he approves of you. This means you're someone to be seen with, someone to make nice to. It's all very political," she apologizes. "But it's high society. This is what politics _is_ on this planet."

Laisa grimaces. "Well, I hope that their interest has vanished by now. It's been long enough."

"That depends on how many more times he's going to dance with you," Delia says.

Laisa looks to Duv for support. "Duv, what do you think?"

Duv seems lost for something to say. "I can't speak for the Emperor," is what he eventually settles on. _Officers._

"Neither can I, but I can speak for myself, and he wasn't flirting with me," Laisa says firmly. "So no one should be thinking that."

"That won't stop them," Delia says. "This city is really eager to marry Gregor off to anyone he stands next to. Try to take it as a compliment? They didn't immediately write you off for being Komarran."

"I'm writing me off for being Komarran," Laisa says. "And I'm sure the Emperor was as well, if he was even interested." Which he wasn't. Laisa knows when men are flirting with her. One of the notable things about being on Barrayar is that she's only noticed women flirting with her. She's not sure why. But it's gotten her in a relationship with Delia, so she's not complaining. Men here might be interested in Komarran women, but they aren't interested in her. It suits her just fine.

 

\---

 

As they walk into the Imperial Residence the night of the party, Delia feels even taller than she usually does, surrounded by men who are mostly shorter than her. Duv is in his dress greens -- she'd had to talk him out of his ceremonial red-and-blues by explaining that, even for this ball, no one would be wearing them and he would stick out -- and Laisa is wearing what Delia imagined must be the height of Komarran fashion until Laisa gently dissuaded her and told her it was something she'd last worn to a shareholders summit ball four years ago, right after the Komarrans got back local rights. It had been something to see, Laisa had said cryptically. Duv had looked at her, fighting with his facial muscles, and then lost the fight and started laughing.

One day, she'll get them to explain that joke to her. By which she means, if she doesn't have it out of one of them by later tonight, she'll consider it a personal failure. This is a challenge and Delia Koudelka does nothing if not rise to challenges.

Duv's in green and Laisa's in a gorgeous red, the color of Komarran summer sunset, which was why Delia had thought it was amazing, and just because she's not as current on Komarran fashions as she is on Barrayaran fashions doesn't mean anything (oh, shut up, _all of you_ , but especially Martya, yes, I see you giggling in the back, stop it!), and so it had been up to Delia to dress to color coordinate to the both of them. 

Which had meant borrowing a dress from Olivia.

Olivia had said it's just because Delia's finally discovering the joy and pleasure in fucking with the minds of the entire city, making them wonder if she was escorting Duv, Laisa, or both of them at once. Which was stupid, because Delia's invitation allows her to bring a guest. That's in 'a' as in 'one'. Not two. And Duv's on his own invitation, rising ImpSec star that he is.

"So he's the one who's actually bringing Laisa?" Olivia'd asked shrewdly.

Delia had not dignified that with a response and had retreated silently with the dress. The worst part is, she's sure that Olivia's going to count that as a win for herself. Which is totally the case, shamefully, but just because Delia acknowledges that doesn't mean she likes it. She does have her pride.

But, anyway, she may have been defeated by her younger sister, but Delia had won in the end, because she walks into the Imperial Residence flanked by two smart and wonderful Komarrans, and if pressed, Delia would add that they are also funny, even if they do insist on keeping making Komarran in-jokes and then refusing to explain them to her. Something about how that wouldn't even help. You have to be a Komarran to get them, apparently. And unexplainable humor is a concept that Delia's very familiar with. Usually when people around her claim something is an inside joke and she wouldn't understand, what they're really doing it being condescending and ignorant, assuming that a silly girl could never understand their oh so impressive and sophisticated humor.

And that's probably not what Duv and Laisa mean by it. Delia's just been surrounded by bad influences all her life and should learn to give people -- especially those with actual valid reasons to claim cultural differences - the benefit of the doubt.

Because this is different. They might actually have a point about cultural differences causing problems when translating humor. Some concepts just aren't funny in some cultures because of the lack of relevant history and all that. Laisa, for example, finds Delia's amusement over District border squabbles to be bizarre and completely inscrutable.

Still. They could explain it. Delia might not understand the humor or appreciate the joke on its artistic merits, but at least she would have the academic knowledge of why the joke was funny. Although Delia's noticed that jokes tend to stop being funny when they're explained too much. Maybe she should just suck this up and accept the fact that her girlfriend has in-jokes with someone else and doesn't feel the need to over-explain them to someone who won't get them. And Delia's just being an annoyingly over-persistent Barrayaran cultural imperialist by demanding they share their culture with her even though she won't understand it and might accidentally disrespect it by saying the wrong thing.

She really should stop letting this get to her. If this is the biggest problem in her relationship with Laisa... well, they should be so lucky, because it's not.

But Delia's the luckiest girl there because she has the most wonderful dates, even if technically they're each other's dates and Delia is going date-less, poor her, she should be pitied. Well, no, but she's sure that's what people are going to think. Poor Delia, going with friends, guess no Vor lord she grew up with needed a pity date.

Martya's actually here with Ivan, shockingly, and it's not because she had to. It seems Ivan likes it when a woman disdains him and snarks at him and generally acts like, no, she has no interest in him at all. Which does make sense, because Lord Ivan Vorpatril, son of Lady Alys Vorpatril, descended from Prince Xav Vorbarra, is a man who gets flattered about as often as Gregor does. Maybe even more, because flattering Ivan is a risk-free venture; you can only gain. If you start flattering Gregor, you might end up like Count Vordrozda and die chained to a pillar in the Great Square for everyone to see. Gregor takes flattery with suspicion, while Ivan lets it bounce off of him like he's a trampoline. It won't stick to him, and meanwhile, Gregor probably has anyone who flatters him too much investigated for treason. That would be just like him; Delia wouldn't be shocked to find out that's true.

But Martya has known Ivan all of her life. She is not impressed by him and she is more than willing to tell him all the many, many, many ways he is shooting himself in the foot with his flirting and/or seduction strategies. If she liked him more, she'd be giving him tips and advice on how to get better at it. But because this is Martya we're talking about, she does nothing of the sort. She just mocks him relentlessly.

Delia might actually worry, if this were some Vor lord other than Ivan, because they can take offense at the drop of someone else's hat. But Ivan can tease and mock with the best of them, and he can match her barb for barb once you get him to forget that he's supposed to be upholding the family name and all that, and remind him that no one is fooled by his Captain Ivan Vorpatril, Defender Of The Imperium stone-faced pose that he's been trying to perfect since he'd gotten that promotion a few months back. He's going to need a couple more decades of practice. At least.

Or maybe just a change of scenery and to be around people who don't know him. She suspects he might have been very impressive when he was on Earth. But it's Ivan, so maybe he wasn't.

And Olivia's here with a Vor lord, too, making Delia the odd woman out with her friendly Komarran friends and no date, alas, poor Delia, and, yes, she's already getting pitying looks of that sort, because this is an event that's partially celebrating her family's contributions to ending the Pretendership and poor, poor, _academic_ Delia couldn't find someone to go with her. Because let's never forget that there is no one like a Vor dragon who can make going to graduate school into a terrible wasting disease that Delia will never recover from.

It takes Olivia a moment to realize Delia's come in and then she waves at Delia from across the room. Delia squints, trying to figure out who the Vor lord is. Some Vor lord, Olivia had said dismissively when Delia had asked earlier, which was so suspicious that it had taken Olivia laughing at her for Delia to let go of the point.

It's Lord Byerly Vorrutyer, Delia realizes after trying to figure out where she knew that face. But Lord Byerly isn't dressed in his usual town clown regalia, so blinding unfashionable that it actually does, like he intends, bend over backwards into being completely fashionable. It's a special talent, she's always assumed, and it's probably his tailor's and not his. But he's Vor so of course he'll take all of the credit for someone else's work.

Instead of some outrageous excuse for a color, Lord Byerly is dressed like... well, _Lord_ Byerly. He's standing straight and formal, a major change from his usual posture which proclaims that he doesn't care enough to pretend he was ever military, and his hair is neatly arranged. And he's wearing full House uniform. He's some close relation to the Count -- Delia thinks first cousin, but there might be a removed generation in there somewhere, or maybe it's a second cousin; the Vor family tree's never been her strong suit, to say the least. But he's certainly entitled to wear all of the House decorations he has glittering his chest. He must have. They can arrest you for wearing the wrong uniform, even though no one has been in decades. Still, you'd be very stupid to come to a formal event at the Imperial Residence in a uniform you don't have any claim on. 

And Lord Byerly, Delia has reason to know, is not stupid.

Now what the hell is Olivia doing here with Lord Byerly Vorrutyer is what Delia wants to know. And it's suddenly a much more pressing and much more important question, because Delia's now spotted Count Vorrutyer, accompanied by his sister.

And Count Vorrutyer _never_ comes to these kinds of things. You can barely pry him out of his District even for the Emperor's Birthday. There's no reason for him to bother to show up tonight.

Something strange is going on here and Delia knows, just _knows_ , that Olivia knows all about it. This could go terribly wrong. This could all explode in their faces.

But Delia doesn't make a move to stop it. Olivia's got to grow up sometime. No one stopped Delia the first time she tried something daring at the Imperial Residence. And so Delia's not going to stop Olivia.

But she is going to stand to the side, silently judging, just like she's sure people did to her when she'd first dared to dare. If nothing else, this is her sisterly right.

 

Dinner's a formal affair and Delia is thankful they're at Gregor's table again. It cuts down on the wrong kind of staring. This is the right kind of staring. She's the daughter of two people who helped end the Pretendership. This is exactly where she should be, her prole family being celebrated for their services to the Imperium.

 

Duv excuses himself from the conversation and the man standing next to Martya unfreezes.

Martya stares.

"He's an ImpSec Captain," her dance partner says sheepishly. "I'm a grunt."

"Wow," Olivia marvels. "It's like watching Da tear a Vor lordling to shreds. I'm impressed with your not-boyfriend, Delia."

"He can be very impressive," Delia agrees.

 

Laisa dances with the Emperor again, keeping in mind what Delia had said about people's expectations. Laisa would be a safe person for the Emperor to dance with; no one would think _her_ a candidate to be Empress. And the Emperor is perfectly pleasant yet again, asking her about her work. She likes him, even if she's not always sure she should.

She pays more careful attention to him, though. Not _more_ attention; he's the Emperor of Barrayar, he'll always have everyone's attention. But she watches him carefully and comes away satisfied. She was right. There's no attraction or intentions there. He really must be dancing with her in the name of planetary unity, or to escape dancing with someone who _would_ think he wants to marry her.

 

Delia returns to Laisa with a glass of wine and some Vor lord on her arm.

"Byerly Vorrutyer," the Vor lord says before Delia can make an introduction. "And you must be Delia's Komarran. We've all heard absolutely nothing about you," he blatantly lies.

"Byerly is Lady Donna's cousin, somehow," Delia says. "And he's looking for Olivia," she says pointedly, and Laisa gets the impression that if this were not the middle of the Imperial Residence, she might be stepping on his foot while she said that.

"I haven't seen Olivia in the last few minutes," Laisa says. "What do you do, Lord Byerly?" Too late, as usual, she remembers that can be a very rude thing to ask a Vor lord, some of whom don't work at all. It's strange. The Vor seem to pride themselves publicly on their devotion to service and their military careers, and then there are some who are professionally rich and scandalous. How do they resolve it?

 _Do_ they resolve it?

"Drink," Delia mutters, scanning the room over everyone's heads for her absent sister. "Often to excess."

" _Delia_ ," Laisa chides her, and blushes. So Lord Byerly is one of the Vor who do nothing, then. She wonders what people who do 'nothing' actually do. You can't get drunk all the time. Some time, at least, has to be spent sobering up or procuring more alcohol.

"No, that's quite all right," Vorrutyer says. He smiles at Laisa and he does look drunk. "I quite often am."

 

Da is off in a corer with Prime Minister Racozy and Captain Illyan and it looks like Racozy corralled them both and is keeping them there with threats. Well, probably not threats, that's not very likely in this public setting, but certainly with some serious topic that needs to be conspicuously addressed right now, and that's keeping them all huddled very close and focused only on each other, to the side of the room, where everybody can see.

Has Da been spending more time with Racozy lately? Delia tries to remember. Mama and Leva Racozy have been friends for years and they practice together once or twice a week, it's been that way forever. The Racozy children are all much older than Delia so she never had much to do with them, but their parents have been friends for a long time.

This has to be political, but what kind of political is Delia's father involved in? He's always parroted the line about serving officers not getting involved in politics, he's always seemed happy to have the space he's already made for himself in the Service. But maybe this is military. Maybe Illyan and Racozy are talking to him about that.

 

 

"Oh, it's brilliant," Olivia says breathless. "Just watch, you'll love it and fall over laughing at the same time. It's so _Vorrutyer_ ," she says, and Delia's amazed at how Olivia can make that sound like an amazing character trait and actually a positive thing. Olivia is clearly more talented at lying than Delia had realized. She should have a word with Lady Alys about that, she thinks.

"Sire," Lady Donna says, and bows. Her brother, standing next to her, bows as well. They have the exact same expression on their faces, and the Emperor looks at both of them and then raises a steady eyebrow at Lady Donna.

"Sire," Count Vorrutyer says, "I present to you my petition."

"Do you," the Emperor says flatly.

Lady Donna smiles. It looks hungry. Beside Delia, Olivia makes a small whimper. "I thought about creating a terribly awkward precedent that, no matter which way it went, you would then have to live with, sire. But then I recalled an awkward precedent that you already have to live with."

Count Vorrutyer takes one step forward and goes down onto his knees in pure and proper supplication. "Sire, as my sister's closest and most senior male relative, I hereby declare her Lord Donna, as is my right, and present her to you as my solely named male heir, and I declare that I will present this before my brother Counts for their confirmation."

Someone in the back starts laughing, stops abruptly, and starts coughing just as hard instead

Gregor does not seem to breathe for a long, long time. Behind him, a Vorbarra armsman flexes his fingers, and she can feel the whispers of ImpSec men moving around her, going from _attentive_ to _alert_.

Then he nods, slightly. "Your named heir is your own choice, Count Vorrutyer. But take care who you bring for confirmation. You may be Vorrutyer, and that alone is precedent enough for me to allow this. But be very certain that you mean what you say when you bring this before the Counts and are willing to face what this will mean for you, your family, and your District."

Olivia exhales loudly and Delia elbows her.

"What did you have to do with this?" Delia whispers harshly and Olivia turns her head and murmurs into Delia's ear: "not now, later."

"I am certain of my choice," Count Vorrutyer says. "There is no other and there never will be other. This on my word as Vorrutyer."

Gregor nods stiffly. "Then you may stand, my lord Count, and you may bring your petition before the Counts Assembled. You and your... _brother_."

Donna, to her credit, does not grin as widely as Olivia does at that moment. Count Vorrutyer looks only very, very relived. Gregor, as always in times like this, looks not amused at all, but Delia would swear that Gregor is amused around his eyes. Inside, he's probably falling over laughing, she'd guess.

Suspiciously, she looks at her sister and wonders if Gregor had had prior warning that this was going to happen and so very publicly. Well, it would have to be publicly. As many witnesses as possible, for something as only-the-Vorrutyers as this. That way, it couldn't be hushed up. This probably is already all over the capital, and it'll be all over the planet by the end of the day, the Imperium by the end of the week. The Vorrutyers had to make a show of it, the same way the Vorkosigans had made a show of accepting Mark. No one would believe it otherwise.

 

"Oh, my," Laisa grins.

 

\---

 

"Okay, tell me everything," Delia says once she's got her sister cornered and alone.

Olivia's grinning. "Wasn't that amazing?"

"I agree," Gregor says from behind them, and Olivia and Delia both freeze and then, carefully, turn around.

"Sire," Olivia says slowly.

"Miss Olivia," Gregor says, then raises his eyebrow. His arms are already crossed.

"I did warn you," Olivia says, "that the Vorrutyers were going to make a statement."

"Oddly, when a Vorrutyer suddenly goes to his knees, my security goes on high alert. I can't _imagine_ why," Gregor says thoughtfully.

"I didn't realize he'd do it like that," Olivia admits. "I thought, you know, a bit more warning."

"He's a Vorrutyer," Gregor says, heavy with irony. "Why in the world would you think that?"

"He's a Vorrutyer," Olivia shrugs. "It's not like they scripted it or ran it by me first for me to approve. I told you what I knew."

"Does Donna know you were going to do that?" Delia asks.

"She knew I'd tattle," Olivia says. "I didn't say who I'd tattle to, but I said I'd make sure no one shot her in the back of the head by accident. It would only be on purpose, I said, and she said that was an acceptable risk. They're Vorrutyers," she adds, shrugging. "Who knows how they think?"

"I think I can get my head around some of it," Gregor says. "Just enough to recognize the pattern of thought. Miles is quite similar at times, but don't tell him I said that. I would never live it down and he might actually be offended and not merely play at it because he thinks he's supposed to."

Delia's always figured Miles's twisty nature came from his mom, not whatever Vorrutyer ancestry he can claim. The Count is too straight-forwardly honorable. But Mama and Da tell stories about Tante Cordelia all the time. Some of those stories involve cutting people's heads off. It had seemed safer to blame Miles's mother.

"I think this was Plan A," Olivia offers. "I don't know what Plan B was, but this was the better idea."

"When the Counts choke on turning Lady Donna into Lord Vorrutyer, I'm sure We will find out," Gregor says.

"No, this had to already be Plan C," Delia says. "Hasn't Count Vorrutyer been engaged five or six times? Plan A was probably finding a woman who'd marry him. Plan B would have been finding a male relative he didn't hate." Lord Byerly had shown up tonight, probably in support of this plan, so his Count couldn't hate him too much, but might still hate him just enough not to leave a District to him. Delia can't say she'd blame him for that; she knows Byerly. She wouldn't give a District to him either. "And then Plan C, turning his sister into his brother. Plan D is probably a clone, thanks to Mark." 

Hate all your male relatives, so might as well create a new one instead, either by using your sister or your clone. That probably makes sense to the Vor.

Although if Count Vorrutyer did try to clone himself as his own heir, all the Vorrutyers would be clamoring for an Imperial audience to complain about it. But that's Gregor's problem, not Delia's.

Gregor looks pained. Delia probably shouldn't go around giving the Emperor a headache, but the Vorkosigans already made the first move about clones. It would only make sense for someone to pick up that banner. Why not the Vorrutyers?

"It's not like you were looking forward to working with Richars, were you?" Olivia asks Gregor. "He's not someone who I'd think would be sympathetic to your agenda. Donna's much more your type. Besides, she'll be a great distraction and a symbol. Of course this is going to make Barrayar a mockery. How awkward it is that a woman has to be legally a man to have any rights. How terribly, horribly, completely awkward. Maybe it's time to change things, so Barrayar isn't the laughing-stock of the Nexus. And all thanks to Donna Vorrutyer, we can have that today and tomorrow, not next year or whenever you'd planned or thought you'd be able to pull it out and get the Counts to agree to something. No need thank me, Gregor. It's all in a day's work."

"Your family has done me many great services during my reign," Gregor says blandly. Both Delia and Olivia hear the undercurrents and grin: none of this counts as one of the great services.

But they're celebrating one of the great services tonight. That counts for something.

"This is another one," Olivia insists. "It helps move your agenda along. And they're using your philosophy to do it. Anyone can come in with a cannon and blow it up," Olivia continues blithely, like there aren't four very interested armsmen suddenly paying very close attention. "But if you know how it's constructed, you can move things around and keep the balance, so you _can_ remove something without everything collapsing. They're just... removing that she's a woman. It keeps precedent, too, and that's important to the Counts. Or so I'm told."

Gregor doesn't take the bait.

"Of course it's a scandal, but it's a manageable one. Aren't those the ones you want? Think of it as the Koudelka family mission. We'll get you what you want. But it might be in a bag and not gift-wrapped, and it might be stained at the edges. But it's still what you want."

There's some commotion coming from the open door to the ballroom and Delia pokes her head in to see Laisa standing next to Duv, being cornered by men in undress greens. Armed men in undress greens. This isn't Residence Security!

"Excuse me," she says to Gregor and doesn't wait for a response before running towards them. It's a breach of every protocol on the planet. She doesn't care.

 

\---

 

This night has been much more pleasant than Laisa's first time to the Imperial Residence. She hasn't been as nervous and she doesn't feel like the walls are closing in on her this time. Maybe she's getting used to this.

It scares her a little that she might be getting used to this.

Delia's family has been wonderful. They seem to have finally come to a conclusion about her as a group and decided to welcome her. Madame Koudelka has been so helpful, full of wisdom and humor and tips on how to get over the awe. Madame Koudelka hadn't grown up with this the way Delia has and so there are things about it that Delia just doesn't notice, but Madame Koudelka knows about and understands completely.

When Delia comes to visit Komarr, Laisa will make sure that her family is as welcoming as the Koudelkas have been. Martya and Olivia have warmed to her and seem to have adopted her as a fifth sister. They've been teasing her and joking with her, but it has a much different feel to it than it did before. Now it's like they're teasing a sister, not hazing an enemy. It's like Laisa with her friends and she imagines this must be what being a sister feels like. That sense of belonging and friendship, but without the complicated factors of bringing generational divides into things. Like Laisa and her cousins, if they'd grown up on top of each other instead of only visiting.

It's nice, being welcomed. Delia's her first Barrayaran friend and now the Koudelka family are adding to her experience of Barrayarans as friendly people and not either the invaders or as the occasionally-strange community of Barrayarans on Komarr.

The Koudelkas make an interesting contrast from the rest of the crowd. There are a lot of Komarrans here tonight, because the night of the Pretendership Ball is one of those times when the Emperor is making a point to his subjects. The last couple years, that point has been about integration rather than invasion, and tonight the pillars of the Komarrans business community on Barrayar are attending along with every Komarran officer in the Barrayaran military who is on duty on this planet.

The room's stacked with Komarrans, mixing among the Barrayaran Vor and social and political elites. And, wonder of wonders, even with this, Duv's more relaxed tonight, too.

It might have something to do with how much more comfortable he's become with his own people since he started forcing himself to go to Komarran parties and events and prove he wasn't there as a spy or to start a fight, but because he's Komarran, too, and he will, and damn the doubters, prove by deed that Komarrans can succeed against all odds inside the most secretive and most paranoid Barrayaran military service.

It might also help that, of all the Komarran members of the Barrayaran military here tonight, Duv is the ranking officer. It's a side of Duv's she's never seen before, that of the potential patron. She wonders if he's ever acted like a patron to other Komarrans, helped them out, given them advice.

It's a strange idea. Duv positions himself so much as the outsider that it takes a conscious shift to think of him as the insider, as the power broker. But he holds some high-ranked position inside ImpSec; he must be that, too. An ImpSec insider, a man with significant power, a man whose recommendation could help your career.

That's actually a pleasant thought. It's much better than the idea that Duv would be career poison to anyone who touches him.

She's danced with Duv tonight and it's been wonderful, for a moment forgetting everything else. Duv makes her feel like this is effortless, not something that she'd had to learn as a child. Komarran dances were always enjoyable, but Barrayaran dances had always felt ill-fitting. There was no natural home for it on Komarr.

But this isn't anything like that. It's actually fun. No wonder the Barrayarans like it. No wonder _Delia_ likes it. This is like flying without leaving the ground, all breathless and fun, with the music moving through you, and a partner there with you.

Laisa wonders if Delia belongs to a dance club like she's heard about. She should ask. She should go. It could be fun, and Laisa can always use a new hobby, especially when the political climate is making everyone very nervous. They all need distractions right now and Laisa will welcome any harmless fun that she can grab.

Captain Illyan is here tonight, though, and he looks well. No, she rethinks that, he really doesn't look well. He looks thirty years older than he should, but, she ruthlessly reminds herself, he's _Barrayaran_. A Barrayaran born before uterine replicators were available and on a planet with terrible pollution standards. This might be how he's supposed to look.

You don't last long on this planet if you assume everyone around you is ill and strained and dealing with terrible problems when, in fact, they are just looking like they are supposed to look. There's a story going around about a Komarran boy around eight years old who went up to a Barrayaran and asked them what kind of wasting disease they had. The family had ended up returning home much sooner than they'd planned. Failure to integrate, everyone had said with a knowing nod, meaning that that's what happens to Komarrans who can't manage to change their thinking for their new circumstances. Because things are different here, _fundamental_ things are different here, and you can't ever forget that.

So Captain Illyan looks like a Barrayaran male of his age who may or may not be dying from a terrible disease that they can't prevent around here because their medical technology, while advanced in certain ways, still lags behind in most. And he's here on the arm of Lady Alys Vorpatril, which had made Delia squeal when she'd noticed that, so it must have been a good sign. Maybe that means that Captain Illyan is back to normal and the crisis is over. Laisa hopes so desperately.

The dance ends and Duv leads her off of the dance floor. He moves to get them both glasses of a wine off of a passing server when he suddenly stiffens and turns his head slightly towards her.

"Step away from me," he whispers in a desperate hoarse voice.

Laisa turns around quickly and notices what Duv's seen. Armed guards entering the room and coming right towards them. One of them is looking Duv right in the eye and Duv is already trying to get towards a darker corner. Somewhere less public. Trying to make this confrontation less public than it already is.

Conversations are stopping all over the room, all eyes drawn to this new Barrayaran invasion.

And where's Delia? Laisa looks around the room, but doesn't see her. She takes a deep breath and tries so hard not to panic. It's not working.

Duv's all but pushing her away, but Laisa stays right where she is. If they're going to take Duv away, then they will, damn it all, do it while she watches. She's not going to hide when the Barrayarans come to take her friends and family away. She's an adult and she's going to stand there, even if she gets arrested along with him. Because whatever they've decided Duv has done, he hasn't, and Laisa will not be someone who abandons him right now. She won't abandon him like Komarrans have kept abandoning him.

They're both Komarrans. They'll stand together through everything. Come hell or ImpSec, they'll stand together.

 

\---

Delia's running full out by the time she reaches them, her skirt hitched up in her hands. She must look a sight and she could not care less. Damn how this looks, this is _important_.

She only registers that Gregor is right behind her when the ImpSec men arguing with Duv snap to painful attention. One of them is still grabbing hold of Duv's arm though and not letting go.

This is an arrest, then. Delia can feel her heart pounding. Laisa's looks like nothing Delia's ever seen before, terrified and resolute, and Duv looks like he wants to pull his arm away but knows that would be a bad idea.

Delia mostly feels like crying.

 _But we were doing so well!_ She wants to scream.

But not nearly well enough. Not _nearly_ well enough.

"Sire," the guard holding onto Duv salutes with his free hand.

"Lieutenant," the Emperor returns measuredly. "Report."

"It was by my order, sire," says a smooth voice from behind the guards. They part and General Haroche comes to attention before the Emperor.

Gregor lifts an eyebrow at him to say, keep going.

"We have just uncovered proof of Captain Galeni's complicity in the plot to assassinate Captain Illyan," General Haroche says. "When I ordered his location discovered, I found out that he was attending on you tonight. As this is a matter pertaining to your personal security, sire, I judged it too dangerous to wait for the arrest."

 

And then they take Duv away.

 

\---

Delia takes Laisa home and settles her gently behind the table and then pulls out some soup and starts to warm it up on the stove.

"It'll be okay," Delia is repeating soothingly. "It'll be okay."

Laisa warms her hands on her steaming mug. "It won't," she says flatly. "It never is."

"Miles promised he'll handle it," Delia says, "and you don't know Miles. When he says something like that, he's going to go in and blow something up until he gets what he wants. He learned it from his mother, and his mother used to cut off people's heads."

"ImpSec sticks together, and you said he was ImpSec," Laisa says. "You don't know ImpSec. I do. When they find a Komarran to blame, you don't get a defense. You don't get anything but a cell for the rest of your very short life. An ImpSec dungeon isn't a misunderstanding. It's a death sentence."

"It'll be fine," Delia repeats, firmer. "Just trust me, okay? I know you don't have any reason to trust ImpSec. _I_ barely have reason to trust them. I remember when Illyan himself was arrested for treason -- okay, admittedly, not the best thing to bring up right now, sorry, but--"

"Do you know what happened on Komarr when Illyan was arrested?" Laisa asks dully. "You know how we found out? ImpSec cracks down, that's always how it goes. Something makes ImpSec panic and then ImpSec takes it out on Komarr. Komarr pays for ImpSec's power struggles. Because there's nothing ImpSec can agree on more than how to deal with Komarr. Duv was going to change that and now look at what they've done to him. Everything he's done, it's all useless now. He turned his back on Komarr only to have Barrayar stab him instead. He's never done anything but be their tame and loyal pet, turning his back on everything he was before, but what do they care? Illyan's sick and so someone has to die for it, and Duv's a Komarran and that's always been a good enough for ImpSec. If they didn't have us, they'd have to invent us."

 

"We've always been Barrayar's scapegoats, since the moment your isolation ended. If you needed someone to blame, we're your only neighbor. If something's the matter, don't look at your own problems. It's so much easier to blame us. We let the Cetagandans through because we let every military through, it was never anything but that. But Barrayar took it personally, because for some reason, they thought they should get a say in how we governed ourselves and our space. Not that your military doesn't now make the same kind of deals you slaughtered us for having a policy of making. Remember the Hegen Hub War? We heard about that and you have to laugh or you'll start crying, Admiral Vorkosigan doing everything he invaded us to punish us for. But it's always different when you do it, isn't it? You always have some excuse, some justification. But when other people do it, it's completely unforgivable and means we're never to be trusted and we're all traitors and liars and thieves. I'm amazed your high command's never choked on their own hypocrisy."

 

\---

 

Laisa is sure that she was screaming. Her throat is hoarse and her voice comes out in a croak. But she can't remember screaming. She can't remember anything after they took Duv away, him walking stiffly between them, but it clear that this was no honor guard, this was an arrest.

Somehow, she must have gotten out of that room. Someone must have helped her and then gotten her to Joanna and Komarrans. Delia. It must have been Delia. And, being Delia, she must have said something soothing and comforting, but Laisa can't remember any of it.

She looks down at her hands. There's a hand-scrawled message written on a scrap of flimsy. It's in Delia's handwriting. It says, _don't worry, we'll get this all worked out. Everything will be fine._

Laisa makes fists and watches as it crumbles. She lifts her hands and it falls to the floor.

Let it stay there. It won't do any good.

Duv's a Komarran and everyone knows what ImpSec does with Komarrans they've managed to frame for their idea of treason. It's nothing than can just be smoothed over by nepotism and favors. Duv is going to hang, if he's lucky. If he's not... please, oh please, let him be lucky.

If there's anything to hold out hope for, surely it's that. That Duv can be lucky in that, if nothing else.

Please. Please let him be lucky.

 

\---

 

The latest letter from her parents has been full of worry and at the end, her father had come right out and asked her to come home. It's too dangerous there, he'd said, and Laisa had been tempted to go home. But there was Delia to consider, and Duv, and now Laisa stares at her apartment and the comconsole -- bugged, it has to be, she knows, and they'll be actively monitoring it tonight, wanting to see what the high-profile Komarrans on planet do when one of their own has just been very publicly arrested.

Not that most of the high-profile Komarrans on planet would consider Duv one of their own, per se, but Laisa does, and that's enough for her. Others will come around on Duv. That's what she's assumed. And now, after tonight... there had been a lot of Komarrans there. And they'd seen Duv arrested. Maybe some of them would like that, but they must know how it looks.

Still traitors. Still always traitors.

Duv's sacrificed so much, been a pariah to all sides in this matter. Does he have anyone on his side? From what Duv's said, General Allegre might be someone, but would Allegre take a risk now for a Komarran? 

 

Joanna wasn't there tonight, but she rushes home and then approaches Laisa slowly and carefully. She's bearing tea and lots of it. They don't go near the alcohol. Tonight, after this, with everything hanging over their heads as Komarrans, they aren't going there. They aren't taking that risk. They won't be off their game, they won't be at a disadvantage if -- _when_ \-- ImpSec comes for them.

Joanna settles down next to Laisa and wraps her arm around her shoulder, holding her as she cries.

If it wouldn't be so suspicious, she would be on the first ship home, Laisa tells her between sobs. Leaving this stupid, paranoid, horrible planet behind, and going _home_. And then going on the run, probably. She'd probably have to, fleeing Barrayar like that. ImpSec would be after her. She would have to run. And she would have to keep running, to make sure they wouldn't catch her. She'd never have peace, except how is that so different from right now? She doesn't have peace right now. So she would just be exchanging one ImpSec terror for another, and is one worse, is one better? She can't know and she can't decide, but she just wants to get away from here, away from what they've done to Duv, what they would do to all Komarrans if they could, and it's all for _waste_ , isn't it, everything they've done, it's all _worthless_ now.

And of course it doesn't all revolve around Duv, because no one would ever do that and Duv would never allow it to happen to him, would never stand still for it -- stand still like the way he'd done tonight, all proper behavior before a superior officer, and then they'd arrested him and pulled him away, and in front of everyone, and there's Duv's entire life, burned up in an instant. Everything he's done, everything he's sacrificed, everything he's stood for, and now it's all been made for naught. In one instant, ImpSec had destroyed his life.

And what's the point of hoping anymore? If they'd do this to Duv -- poor, loyal Duv -- then they'd do this to anyone. _Have_ done this to anyone, and now they've proven that again. Just to rub the point in. No one's safe. No one. You can be a Captain in ImpSec, you can be a highly decorated traitor to your own planet, but ImpSec will still destroy your life and your reputation in one fell swoop. Because it doesn't matter to them what you've done. You're a Komarran. You're guilty and you will always be guilty and there's nothing you can do to change that.

So why bother trying?

It's all such a waste, such a waste. What are they even doing here? Why are they even trying? Why haven't they learned by now? It's not as if ImpSec's ever made a secret of how much they hate and despise and distrust Komarrans. As a group, as individuals. _All_ Komarrans. It doesn't matter who or what you are. You're a Komarran. If there's a crime, you're the one who is guilty.

Because you're Komarran and everyone knows that Komarrans are filthy criminals who can't be trusted, who have to be beaten into submission again and again, have to be conquered over and over again, because didn't they get the point the first time with Admiral Vorkosigan or the second time with the revolt? Of course they didn't, because Komarrans are filthy stupid criminals who never learn anything because they're too stupid to know how stupid they are, too stupid to know when to quit, too stupid to learn how to become loyal Barrayaran subjects and lead peaceful lives.

Of course they don't know how. Because when they try to lead peaceful, gentle, loyal lives, ImpSec still comes in the night and takes them away. Because _it doesn't matter_ what you've done, it matters what you are. ImpSec's taught them that time and time again. So why is Laisa surprised? She shouldn't be. She really shouldn't be.

Because Duv's not different. Not really. Not different _enough_. He's Komarran. That's good enough for ImpSec. It always has been good enough for ImpSec. And now with Duv out of the way, it probably always will be good enough for ImpSec.

"Shhh," Joanna murmurs, combing Laisa's hair back from her forehead with her fingers. "Deep breaths, Laisa. In and out. In and out."

Laisa nods in sharp jerking motions, trying to focus on her breathing and getting it under control. In and out, in and out, in and out. She can do this. She's a Toscane. She's heir to everything. To the Toscane Corporation, to her conglomerate, to her family's shares. To Komarr and everything that entails. To Komarr and its legacy and its fights and its dreams. She's the heir to it all, and she can't stop sobbing her heart out for a man who tried to ignore everyone who told him he can't use his inheritance of Komarran history to try to change things, and ended up buried beneath all that history, who ended up destroyed because he was one man trying to hold back a storm, and he'd crumbled. Because you can't do it alone and Duv just fell because of that.

And it's not worth it. It's not worth Duv's life. It's not worth anyone's. Too many have died already, too much has been destroyed.

But they can't stop, Laisa tries to remind herself. They _can't_. They don't have a choice. If they don't try to speak to Barrayar, if they don't work on this level, they'll have worse than nothing. They'll go backwards. They'll regress to those years after the Revolt, and no one, _no one_ , wants that. And so they have to play Barrayaran games, even though they don't want to. Because that's what being conquered means. It means you have to play the invaders's game by the invaders's rules, because it's the only game in town. You have to play, even though you can't win, because if you don't, you'll surely lose.

And it's the only game in town.

"What's the point?" Laisa demands of Joanna, and Joanna pulls her in closer and kisses her temple.

"I have no idea," Joanna admits. "Your guess is as good as mine right now."

"There's no point," Laisa whispers. It's a confession. It's a defeat. It's a surrender. "There's no point to any of this." Then, louder, "I want to go home."

"We all do," Joanna says. "You're not alone, Laisa. Even those who didn't like Galeni are going to be sick to their stomachs over what happened tonight. No one's going to like this. There's nothing _to_ like in this. It's not Galeni falling. It's ImpSec yanking him down."

Yes, that's it. Duv succeeded and ImpSec yanked him down. Because they can't, they _won't_ , be proven wrong, and Duv's been proving them wrong all this time. Because he's been a trustworthy Komarran who will be their pet and do their dirty work. Because he's shown them by words and by actions that he's as good as, if not better, than any Barrayaran officer. Because he's been putting their prejudices to lie by simply existing. With everything he does, he's been proving them wrong. And ImpSec can't have that. And so they're making sure he can't ever do that again. Because how dare he work within the system to try to make things change. Because how dare he take Admiral Vorkosigan up on his offer. How dare he take the amnesty, how dare he apply for the Academy after _they_ opened the Academy up to him. How dare he become an officer. How dare he enter ImpSec. How dare he succeed, when ImpSec has spent all of Laisa's life screaming that Komarrans could never succeed, that Komarrans deserve every crack-down ImpSec's ever done, that ImpSec's every action and move is justified because the Komarrans are just that dangerous to the frail, fragile Barrayaran population.

After all, if we're soft on Komarrans, the Cetagandans will do something!

This logic has never made any sense, with the Komarrans being viewed as nothing more than a flimsy stand-in replacement for the Cetagandans, because what did the Cetagandans owe the Komarrans? Nothing. They've never come to their aid in anything, but that's the nightmare outside the dome. That's the fear, that if Barrayar takes its boot off of Komarr's neck, Cetaganda will invade.

Laisa wonders how long Cetaganda has to go without invading before Barrayar will believe that they won't.

It's so hard to prove a negative, after all.

And the Cetagandans are such useful enemies. They're the external foe uniting the masses, and the fear of them keeps the masses in line. And since the Cetagandans haven't played into the Barrayarans hands and invaded again, they've needed a different monster, a stand-in for the Cetagandans who keep disappointing them by not obeying the Barrayarans's biggest fears. And so every time a Komarran stands up and advocates for separation, Barrayar sees it the same way they saw the Cetagandans bombing Vorkosigan Vashnoi. As an act of cruel, unmerciful _slaughter_. And when Barrayarans decide something is too bad to do under the excuse of wartime-- well, it _completely_ loses its effect now that they have that reaction to Komarrans circulating petitions calling for senatorial elections.

Barrayarans have their anger and their rage and their misplaced sense of vengeance, all tightly held beliefs and only so tightly held because they know if they let there be any air between their hearts and their ideas, the ideas will break apart into dust and fly away on circulation currents, because they're so flimsy and ill-thought-out. But they keep them anyway, the stubborn bastards.

And they aren't ever going to give that up. It's too convenient. It's too politically necessary. It's too _Barrayaran_.

And so it's all hopeless and worthless and a waste. Nothing can be done. Nothing.

It's a waste of time to even try.

 

\---

 

The Koudelka home isn't much better than Laisa's apartment had been, once Joanna had arrived and Delia had left to give them the privacy they'd needed from more Barrayarans. It's much louder and more chaotic. It doesn't have that tinge of hopelessness, of despair. It just has a lot of well-earned chaos. No one's on the edge of fleeing the planet, but Delia might be interested in fleeing this family.

Civil authority arrives in the person of Prime Minister Racozy, who nods politely to Da and then sits down at the table and looks at Olivia until Olivia looks down and away. Yes, Olivia really should have given a lot more people some more warning, but that's hardly the biggest problem Team Koudelka have right now.

"Happily, the Vorrutyer inheritance problem is not mine," Racozy says. His gaze lingers on Delia, and Delia wonders if _her_ problem is Racozy's problem, if Racozy cares about Duv, if Duv has more support than he knows.

 

"But a Count needs an heir. Who would marry her?" Da asks.

"I would," Olivia offers.

Delia elbows her sharply. This is not the time for Olivia to admit to an ambition to be a Countess.

"It doesn't have to be her child," Delia says. "She's her brother's heir, after all. She could make a cousin her heir. There's enough Vorrutyers. I'm sure she can find one. Or she can adopt one of them. There are endless possibilities. She just has to pick one, and she doesn't have to do it now, there's plenty of time. How old's the Count anyway? He can't be that old."

"Thank you, Delia," mutters her father, who has to be at least ten years older than Count Vorrutyer anyway. Maybe fifteen. Twenty. How old is Count Vorrutyer? Delia has no idea. He's one of those Counts that seem ancient by virtue of their opinions rather than by virtue of their wrinkles. But Count Vorrutyer did keep trying to get married a lot, so he can't be that old.

 

"Gregor can't be happy," Da says. "Komarran integration went back ten years tonight."

Racozy nods in acknowledgment. Martya looks confused. "I thought Komarrans didn't like Delia's not-boyfriend," Martya says.

"Oh, they don't," Racozy says. "We've caught two cells trying to assassinate him. But _they_ want to be the ones to hurt him."

"It's like any siblings," Da explains. "You might tease your sister, but you'll punch anyone else who does it."

"So they're estranged, but still loyal," Martya says. "Sounds Vor."

Da laughs. "No, just family. To be Vor, they'd have to have blood feuds. Or," he adds, glancing at Olivia, "suborn my daughters for political plots. Who exactly came up with that precedent?"

Olivia shrugs. "Can't remember," she says.

"I'll bet," Da says. "Whoever she is should be congratulated." Racozy looks even more annoyed. "Come on, Raul, you have to admit it was funny."

"We had a set agenda through Winterfair and the subsequent season," Racozy says pointedly. Da looks abruptly serious.

"Ah, well," Da says uncomfortably. "I'm sure Gregor will find time for it."

"The Vorrutyers aren't in any hurry," Olivia says airily.

 

\---

 

It should be Laisa here. Miles had insisted; when it comes to choices for friendly, familiar faces for Duv to see while Miles went around being an Auditor and shaking the rats out of ImpSec, Laisa's the only choice. 

But Laisa won't go into Imperial Security Headquarters for very understandable reasons. Miles had offered, come very close to requested, and Miles might be a temporary Auditor, but he's still an Auditor. Delia had jumped in before it could escalate. She wasn't sure what Laisa would have done to Miles, but it wouldn't have been pretty, or legal.

So Delia stays with Duv, sits next to him inside that tiny, horrible cell and wait out the long stretch of minutes. Duv's not looking at her or at anything. He's staring at his hands. His knuckles are all torn up and he has bruises all over his arms and neck. He has finger-shaped bruises on his face and the back of his neck and they look self-inflicted, like he was clutching his skin so hard he didn't realize he was hurting himself.

Delia doesn't have any idea what to say to him, so she doesn't say anything. She just stays there with him, being a silent witness, while the cell fills with the sound Duv's ragged breathing.

Delia has no idea how long they're in there for. The time stretches out, every moment endless. It feels like they're in there for hours, but it can't have been too long. It just feels like forever, and it's meant to. This is ImpSec, and Laisa's right to react the way she had. Delia's a Barrayaran. This is her planet. She should be able to handle this.

 

"Duv," Allegre says, then words clearly fail him.

Duv sways unsteadily on his feet and raises his hand. His fingers curl in. It looks like he isn't clear on if he should salute Allegre or try to punch him. Then he lowers his arm and Allegre takes a step forward and braces to catch him.

Allegre's face is a carefully blank slate, stern and impassive.

"Duv," Allegre tries again. "The charges against you have been dropped. You're free to go once we finish processing your paperwork."

Duv stumbles and Allegre grabs him before he can fall, righting him.

"It might be better," Delia says hesitantly, "if we got him out into the light." He might think this is some kind of hallucination, she doesn't say.

 

 

"It was Haroche," Miles says. "He wanted a promotion."

Duv stares, then he turns to Allegre, who nods. Duv continues staring throughout Miles's explanation for how Haroche had done it, then he stammers, throat dry, "forget what I said."

Allegre brightens slightly, looking hopeful. "Does that include the part about resigning your commission?" he asks.

Duv bites his bottom lip and stares at his hands, rotating his now-unfettered wrists. He says nothing, loudly.

Allegre reaches out and touches his hand, getting his attention. "Duv," he says, "at least go home and get dinner, and a good night's sleep, before you make any important decisions, will you promise me that?"

Duv looks up at him, looking everything like a ghost drained of all emotion. "I'll think about it," he says.

"You will be taking him home, Miss Koudelka?" Allegre asks her.

She nods. "Yes, sir."

Several unspoken conversations fly around through body language and after enough of that, Miles orders one of the guards to help make sure Duv and Delia get out of ImpSec HQ without anyone bothering them, and loans them his driver and groundcar to drive them to Duv's flat a couple blocks away. Miles isn't taking any chances of someone using this opportunity to get at Duv, or bother him, and Delia's so grateful she could just kiss Miles, she really could.

She calls Laisa as soon as she has Duv settled in and has pushed him in the general direction of the shower with the cheerful comment of, "you'll feel more human when you're clean."

Laisa doesn't bring up the video at first when Delia calls, and when she does, she sees why. Laisa's been crying. Joanna is standing behind her with her hand on Laisa's shoulder.

"We got Duv out," Delia reports. "He's okay. He's safe."

Laisa starts sobbing again and Joanna comes near the vid pickup. She bends down. "What happened?"

"The head of Domestic Affairs was behind it all--"

"The one who arrested him?" Laisa asks hoarsely.

Delia grimaces. "Yes. He was the one who poisoned Illyan. Once there was an Auditor around making it clear that the Emperor suspected foul play, he, ah, went for the convenient option."

Joanna just nods.

"But he's confessed to it now and it's over." Not that any of them believe it's over. The charges are dropped, but Duv's not actually started that shower, Laisa's crying, and Delia's... Delia's not sure when it's going to be over for her, either.

Laisa's probably going to be on the next ship home, as soon as she works things out with the Shipping Syndicate. And she'd invited Delia to go to Komarr with her, but Delia's not sure if she's welcome anymore, if the last thing Laisa wants right now is a Barrayaran, even if that Barrayaran is Delia.


	7. Chapter 7

Illyan's official retirement is a quiet affair and the party afterwards is small, solemn, and very private.

Laisa paces her apartment the entire time Duv is there, damning Duv for things beyond his control and yet still damning him anyway for worrying her. Duv had gone back to ImpSec even after they'd let him out of the prison and why? Because he wouldn't run, he said. He would come back and he would look them all in the eye, all of them, and dare them to say a word.

Illyan had done the same thing, apparently, back when Illyan himself had been detained in his own prison, and that had been much longer than one night and one day, Duv had said. And if Simon Illyan could do it, Duv had implied, then so could Duv Galeni. And he wasn't going to let the fact that he didn't _want to_ affect the fact that he _had to_. He said it was a matter of personal honor, and Laisa hadn't been sure whether to laugh or cry. It was the most Barrayaran thing she'd ever heard, after they'd imprisoned him for being Komarran.

ImpSec let him out and so he went back to ImpSec.

But not, Laisa hopes dreadfully, to stay. Just to make a point. Just to show that they haven't beaten him. Just to show that it would take more than being framed for attempted murder and assault on a superior officer to break Duv Galeni of Komarr. Just to show that Duv is stronger than that and rub it in.

And then, only then, after the point has been made, to run away and get away from this paranoid, malevolent organization and its organizational politics and backbiting.

As if there's any guarantee that ImpSec would let him out of the prison a _second_ time, if anything happened and Duv found himself arrested yet again on trumped up charges and humiliated and ruined.

Duv promised to come see her immediately after he left Illyan's retirement party and sure enough, he arrives shortly before midnight. He looks pale and drained, but he's alive and that's the most important thing.

Laisa fusses over him as she gets him to sit down and then she sits down across from him and simply stares at him for a long time.

"You're alive," she says, at his raised eyebrow.

He nods tiredly. "I am," he says. There's none of the reaction he would have shown a few months ago to something like that. Now there's only calm acceptance. He understands Laisa's fears all too well. He's alive. He came out of ImpSec unharmed. None of that can be taken for granted now, not after what happened.

"I know it was only a retirement party," Laisa says, responding to what Duv would have said before and not what he just did. "I've been telling myself that all night. But how many times back home..."

Duv nods again, face drawn and lined, old beyond his years. He's barely forty, but he looks like a Barrayaran forty, not a Komarran. This planet doesn't have its genetics in him, but it has its claws, and it's dragging him down along with them. They're marking him any way they can, claiming him as theirs, and these marks are much more vivid to any Komarran than even those dangerous Horus eyes. Duv can always take the eyes off. But Barrayar's marks go beneath the uniform and touch the man, turning him into one of them. This is their claim: they own him. Galeni belongs to Barrayar, not Komarr. Laisa, who feels that Duv should first and foremost belong to Duv, finds this all heartbreaking, and she wonders what lines Barrayar is whipping into her and if it will take her going home before she'll be able to see them.

 

Duv stands and paces around the room quickly once, twice, tearing his fingers through his hair. Eventually, he comes to stand, leaning against the wall, his hands deep into his pockets and his face a mask of misery.

"There's more," he says.

"What more?" Laisa asks.

Duv slowly comes to attention and then forces his shoulders to relax. He stares at his wrists and says, "they want to keep me."

"Keep you?" Laisa prompts him.

"Promote me. Allegre says it's to show they have the utmost confidence in me and my abilities. That this-- _unfortunate_ turn of events is not an indictment of my abilities or my loyalties or my capabilities. To show clearly that my career has not been destroyed or derailed. To prove that Haroche was wrong. To rehabilitate my image after what Haroche did. To make a point to Barrayar, and to all of the Komarrans who followed me into ImpSec. To-- be their example, and I know all about being their example. To let them keep using me as their example. To take this chance and turn my back on the last week and all that happened and pretend it didn't happen, to let them bribe me with this, to forget how close it all came to disaster."

Laisa frowns at him.

"Allegre says that it shows confidence in me, but to think about him, Duv, for a moment, please, and with that look in his eyes that I damn well better think about him and his position before I snap back with any answer. I have time to give him an answer, he says, but until then, consider how fucked he would be without me. He says he needs me. He says he needs all the loyal men he can get. Loyal to the Emperor, of course, and he'd made a point of stressing how _of course_ that was. Loyal to the Emperor, not loyal to Illyan or to Haroche or to Allegre himself. And I asked how he knew I put my loyalty to the Emperor above all else and Allegre looked at me and said, don't you? And there is no way to answer that question without finding myself back in prison, I told him, and he said, forget about the details, just answer the question. So I threw my thesis at him."

Laisa smiles a little, remembering Martya's story about Delia literally throwing someone's thesis at them.

"Not literally," Duv says, catching Laisa's smile and probably remembering that, too. Laisa had passed along bits of the story to him by way of reassuring him that Delia was no withering flower of Barrayaran stereotype and was a wonderful woman and an excellent person to have as a friend.

"Understandable," Laisa says. "I imagine you didn't have your actual thesis on hand."

Duv smiles weakly. "No, I didn't. But we discussed it-- and we've discussed it before. There's not much else to do sometimes. ImpSec has down times like any other organization, even when we were on Komarr together. What they don't tell you when you're fighting in the Revolt is how _staggeringly_ boring it is from the other side of things. Talking about your academic history with your brother officers is better than gambling away your salary with card sharks. And Allegre always encouraged me to talk about my academic pursuits because he said it set a good example and motivated the men around me by showing off how much better a Komarran was, and how Komarr's full of smart, eager Komarrans all ready to go to the Academy and put them all out of a job. So they'd damn well better keep up if they didn't want Komarrans promoted above their head. That's funny in retrospect, and I'd tell Allegre that but I don't think that would change his mind. He'd just say the Barrayarans failed to show that they deserved the promotion more than me."

 

"I know, I know, the Chief of Imperial Security showing that he can manipulate with the best of them, I'm shocked, too," Duv grumbles. "It's not like he's never manipulated the hell out of people before. Or me before. He used to run covert operations on Komarr and he got that promotion in the last days of the Revolt. It probably contributed to that _being_ the last days of the Revolt. Of course he knows what the fuck he's doing."

 

"And he said to consider his position. Komarran Affairs his entire career. He'd been one of the ones shoved out onto Komarr in the early days of the Revolt and he'd been successful so he'd been kept around and not shoveled back into a different department when mandatory rotations came up. He rotated around Komarr instead and ended up in charge of just about everything at one time or another-- he arrested my father once, did you know? Hell, he arrested _me_ once, but I guess I impressed him enough that he was willing to write a security report for me when I applied to the Academy, which is, let's be honest, the only reason I was allowed in there with my family's history. Allegre was so senior by that point that his judgment call was enough to sway the argument in my favor. And if he'd given me a different security report, said I wasn't trustworthy, I don't think it would have only been that I wasn't allowed into the Academy. I probably would have been thrown in prison and left to rot, because if Allegre doesn't think I'm worth it, and he actually _likes_ Komarr and some Komarrans too -- if Allegre thinks I'm not worth the effort, then I probably shouldn't be allowed to walk around Vorbarr Sultana like any other Barrayaran subject. That would have been the end of it all, and I owe everything to Allegre that he didn't do that. That when I stood up and knocked on ImpSec's door again and said, look at me, I'm Duv Galeni, I have a doctorate, remember me? And I want to go to the Academy. That they didn't look at me and say, you _want_ to come to our attention again? There must be something wrong with you. And then lock me up and throw away the key.

"So I owe him my career in more ways than the obvious, and my life to him, too, and he's been my strongest supporter. And now he's calling in that favor and guilting me, too, reminding me how much he's put on the line for me and how much I owe him, and more than that, that I _let_ him put things on the line for me, and if he hadn't, he would have another protege around to dump things on and rely on in his moment of need -- he actually said that, his moment of need, but I think he was kidding, I hope he was -- and anyway, he needs me right now. He needs loyal men and he needs subordinates he can trust further than he can throw. And, congratulations, Galeni. That's you. So sleep on it and then get back to me, there's a lot that needs to get done and we can't afford to let this sit the way it is for too long. Too much could go wrong."

 

"As if this is a fait accompli. That way, I won't remember that I can say no. But he has a point. I can't turn it down."

 

"Along the line, if you're lucky, they've always said, the Vor will try to take credit for you. Swallow the insult, they say. Swallow it and smile, because objecting will destroy your career, and accepting it will only help you. Allegre says it's getting better, that the younger generation, if a Vor tried to take credit for them, might stomp on their feet first and never put up with that kind of patronizing condescension. But his, my, generation, we know we have patrons and we know that we had to have patrons or we would never have gotten anywhere. That's different from the Vor being responsible, as if they molded us out of clay and created us, but it's true, we never would have gotten where we are without someone very pointedly using nepotism in our favor. And now Allegre's doing it to me. At least he says he knows it's insulting. But that didn't stop him from doing it."

 

"You have to allow them their pride. You have to give them an out. They aren't going to say they were wrong. You have to give them room to say they were right in the past, that their new opinions does not actually mean they admit they were _wrong_. They were never wrong. When they thought one thing, they were right, and now when they have come around on Komarr, they are still right. You have to give them space so that they can say that without sounding like absolute hypocrites and without making it seem like they are in any way sorry for things they said about those who were pro-Komarran in the past. When they said that those who are on our side were traitors, they were right, and now that _they're_ on our side, well, it's not like they're going to apologize for what they said in the past or admit they were wrong, so let's give them space and make it easy to ignore it and move on. Be glad they've come around, not belabor the point that they used to be wrong and scored a lot of political, social, and economic points off the backs of those whose side and bandwagon they have now jumped on. They're Barrayarans. We must allow them their pride."

 

\---

 

"Allegre's promoting me," Duv says flatly. "I'm getting Komarran Affairs."

He's standing very nearly at attention, but tensed, like he expects Laisa to have a violent reaction, and would let her get a few good solid blows in first before lifting a finger to defend himself. It's always easier to let someone beat you up than doing it yourself.

"I told him I'd think about it," Duv continues. "He's already filed the paperwork, he's that sure of it. That sure of me. I did say no. He said take more time and he gave me leave and I have to report tomorrow night to ImpMil to be evaluated, standard procedure for anyone who gets locked into their own jail -- we, _ImpSec_ , do have a standard procedure for that, it does tend to happen, which Allegre said is better than if we didn't, both of it, he meant. Locking up our own and knowing how to handle it if we ended up locking up the wrong one of our own. But-- what I mean," Duv grounds out, staring at a point on the wall nowhere near Laisa, "what I mean to say is, I'm in charge of Imperial Security having to do with Komarr. All of it."

Laisa crosses her arms. She doesn't need to say anything. Silence says it all. And Duv's flawless Barrayaran accent is slipping and she's not sure he's noticed. That also says it all.

"If I ever could have gone home again," Duv says, "Allegre's just cut that hope for good. But what was I thinking, I never could have. It was over the first time I took a ship to Barrayar, and I _knew_ that, and that was half the point anyway. I couldn't go home. I was committed. I'd put myself on that path and nothing, _nothing_ , was going to knock me off of it. Komarr didn't want me anymore, but maybe I could convince Barrayar to, and now Barrayar wants me-- no, now Barrayar's _claimed_ me, and it's much too late and far too much behind me for me to say that I've changed my mind. And I haven't changed my mind!"

He's nearly shouting and Laisa settles back down into a chair. Duv isn't even noticing her anymore, that's obvious. This is between him and the wall, apparently. Or between Duv and Komarr, and that's a bad break-up beyond any friend's ability to fix. They've all broken up with Komarr in their own way, everyone who comes here. It's a compromise, and some back home never forgive, even if you do nothing else but make that one compromise. And Duv's done much more than that.

Laisa's betrayed Komarr in much smaller ways, and she knows the ache she feels when she goes home and confronts the ones who haven't left, who don't understand and don't try to, and at least she has somewhere to go back to. Duv lost everything before he was seventeen and the rest of the Galen clan decided to have nothing more to do with him, not when Duv changed his name and caused a scandal large enough that Laisa vividly remembers her parents discussing it with their friends at great volume for months, how one of their own could turn traitor and decide to join the murderers, how could he.

Laisa speaks carefully of Duv in her letters home. Tensions are still running high about him. Word was, when he was assigned to ImpSec Komarr, he never left the compound without bodyguards. Not to stop him from defecting back to where he came from, but to stop where he came from from killing him. Duv's name is still whispered, and there's still as much disgust drenched into it, but now it's also tinged with dread and fear.

And now head of Komarran Affairs. Even Laisa can't stop the bile from rising in her throat at that thought. That's just disgusting. Only a Barrayaran could come up with that. Put the Komarrans in charge of keeping themselves under Barrayar's heel. Only Barrayarans. They probably think it's perfect.

It's perfectly disgusting.

Duv is swearing now, venting his frustration towards the wallpaper, and Laisa doesn't know who Duv hates more right now, himself or the situation, personified by General Allegre, a man who Duv has always spoken about, when he mentioned him at all, with a healthy amount of respect and a completely unhealthy amount of hero worship. Allegre was the one who brought him to Komarr, who tested his loyalty in that crucible and found him interesting challenges, who never let him think too hard about just what he was becoming, the ImpSec man on Komarr, the one with the keys to the dungeons.

And now Allegre's thrown it in Duv's face. Laisa supposes it's about time, except that this is a terrible time. Duv's on the edge of cracking already, betrayed by Barrayar and now with his betrayal of Komarr ripped from the old scar and flowing fresh with new blood, the wound festering.

"David," she starts, and Duv stops cold, his teeth clamping down on his lips. He looks as if he's just seen a ghost. Laisa feels as if she'd just conjured one. And like she never wants to again; Duv looks _broken_. "What do you call yourself? Tell me honestly."

"I usually don't," Duv admits. "And -- it's been two decades since anyone's called me that and I wanted to answer to it. I haven't-- since my mother's funeral. I'm sure... the family, the Galens, I'm sure there are still people alive who've ever called me that, but... I haven't answered to that in a long time. But if it's who I am? A name's not who I am, it's only what I decide to answer to. If I'm David or Duv, that's not a _question_. My great-uncle might still think of me as David. No one else does. But--," and he stands up straighter, unconsciously looking sterner, more ImpSec, his hands falling to his sides, no longer in fists, "who I am, my choices, that's never been dependent on what people called me. Even when everyone called me David, I was planning for doing things that I could only do after everyone was calling me Duv. It doesn't matter. It's just-- it's only semantics. David or Duv, they're going to hate me either way, and judge me the same. The name was just to make the Barrayarans stop seeing my father when they saw my name."

Laisa nods. "Duv, then," she says. She thinks over the next phrase, but decides to say it. "You look like a Duv these days," she says. "A proper Barrayaran. But what a proper Barrayaran is, I couldn't begin to tell you. I'm not sure even they know. Delia's tried to explain it to me, but I think the truth is, there's no such thing as a proper Barrayaran anymore. They don't know what they're doing. So you're a Komarran traitor. You've chosen to be Barrayaran, and _I understand_ , Duv. If I didn't, do you think I would have ever spoken a word to you? I'm a collaborator, too. I may not know all you've had to deal with, but I understand, as much as anyone could. And I'm not going to forgive you, because there's nothing for me to forgive, you haven't done anything to me. You haven't hurt Komarr. And if Komarrans want to judge you, well, they'll have to judge a lot of other things first. Too much has happened for anyone to be able to point to you and say you're the symptom or you're the disaster or you're the problem. Too much has happened."

"I'm making it worse, though," Duv says finally. "The tame Komarran pet. I'd be offended if I didn't know how true it is. Allegre's tame pet." Duv flinches as he says it. "Vorkosigan's tame pet. That's what my father called me. And worse things, too, but that-- that hurt the most, because it was true."

"You told him what you thought about it?" Laisa asks, surprised. "I didn't know you ever told him your plans--"

Duv buries his face in his hands and Laisa takes the moment to ease him gently into a chair. Duv bends further, his head at the level of his knees, his body folded in on itself.

"My father didn't die on Komarr," he says through his palms. "He died on Earth about five years ago. He survived the explosion and ran. I don't know why. I don't know how or when he even got off planet or why he never told my mother. I never got a good answer about any of it. I think he thought it was doomed, _knew_ it was doomed, the way he and his revolt were working, and so he tried other things. Nothing worked. And then he died on Earth. Mark Vorkosigan killed him. I didn't stop him. If I'd had the chance, I would have killed him myself. I'm-- grateful, that I didn't have to do it myself."

"What happened?" Laisa asks, forcing herself to sound calm, not to sound like an interrogator, even as her mind rebels. That Richard Galen survived-- Laisa can't even think about that. She'd never known him, but she'd known of him. That he'd turned and ran and never told his family, but kept plotting something for years... Laisa's known Komarrans who couldn't accept their defeat, who couldn't bend enough to live under Barrayaran rule. They'd mostly all left, so they wouldn't have to. To think of Richard Galen as one of them, it defies understanding. He'd been one of those who would kill as many people as possible before he'd ever accept defeat.

Duv shakes a little, nearly vibrating. "He got in touch with me. I was at the Embassy at the time. I'm not supposed to tell you this, not supposed to tell _anyone_ this, but if I'm the head of Komarran Affairs, and fuck you so much, Guy, for that trap, and-- and my father got in touch with me. One last chance to get me on his side, to turn my back on everything I had spent the entire time he'd been _dead_ accomplishing, like every decision I had made would vanish because he had reappeared. And then he kidnapped me. Turned me inside out on fast-penta, and you can believe I mentioned that later in my reports. I should have had the allergy by then, a Captain, with the position I had, with the information and access I had, they should never have given that position to someone without the allergy, and they should have given me the allergy the minute they gave me the position, but they didn't trust me, and then my father got his hands on me and tore me open under interrogation. And then Miles Vorkosigan happened and the clone killed my father, and then Guy saved me from the wrath of politics and there I was, back home, with the domes around me, proper gravity once again, and I'd forgotten how good that felt, to feel the way I'm supposed to feel, and my father didn't die on Komarr, and all of his legacy is a lie, even the end of it, his glorious martyrdom, because it never happened. Everything he bequeathed to me, his war, his legacy, his death, all of it was just lies. What he made me do, everything I saw-- and it was all for a man who would torture his own son to achieve his goals. A petty man, and dangerous. He never could see beyond himself and see me for what I was, even as a kid... the things he made me do," Duv finishes in a death whisper, pressing his head deeper into his palms.

 

"What would you do if you resigned?" Laisa asks. This is a promotion there's only one way to decline. Laisa wonders if Duv has thought about it. He must have. He must have spent late nights dreaming up all of the many ways ImpSec could kill him over this, and deciding what he would do if they didn't. It must have included being forced to resign in disgrace, probably as the best-case-scenario that Duv could come up with, locked up by the ones he'd trusted, the ones he's chosen over his past. Surely Duv has been thinking about what he would do if he were no longer Duv Galeni, ImpSec officer, and was once more, Duv Galeni, Barrayaran academic. Laisa would never call that a simpler life, not for a man who was a boy during the Revolt, but certainly one less likely to get you killed. And certainly one more likely to be a better choice if Duv wanted to get married, like he'd sounded like he did only a few short weeks ago. Laisa hadn't come to Barrayar to get married; she'd come here to work. For Duv, to gain connections, getting married might be indelibly linked to succeeding at work.

"I have no idea," Duv says honestly. "I could teach, I suppose, if anyone would have me. I don't think anyone would. _I_ wouldn't even have me. If ImpSec would even let me go. I have the allergy now and I-- I've seen so much, done so much. They'll trust me only so much. I don't know if they'll trust me all the way to a faculty position at some small university in an unimportant District. It's possible. I might be able to guilt Allegre into it, if Allegre knows what guilt it. Which he might," Duv allows. "Supposedly he's human beneath it all. Shockingly."

 

"What happened with my father should have killed my career," Duv says. "It almost did, but then Allegre stepped forward and offered to take me. Said it wasn't pity or weakness or anything like that. Said it was an appreciation for my skills. Said he needed me. Said _ImpSec_ needed me, and if ImpSec was going to hang me out to dry, then Allegre would then just hire me on as a civilian. Threatened to draft me, in fact. He blackmailed the head of Komarran Affairs over it, nearly. Not nearly did it-- he did it, but it was nearly blackmail. Allegre'd had ImpSec Komarr for, I don't know for sure, something like three years at the time, so they could have shoved him out of there and into retirement, but it wouldn't have been a good idea, they needed him and his expertise. And old Diamant had wanted Allegre back home as his own deputy, so he could pass things off to him when he retired as smoothly as possible, and there Allegre was, drawing a line over some worthless Komarran traitor. Diamant didn't see how I was worth the trouble, not after the mistakes I'd made when my father re-established contact with me. Allegre made the point that my father being who he was hadn't prevented me from joining ImpSec and having a promising career, and that my father resurfacing and kidnapping me shouldn't then end the career I'd made in spite of my family.

"Maybe he was wrong and it should have ended it. I'd broken regulations over how I'd gotten in contact with him, over how I didn't tell anyone, and it could have gotten me killed, could have put the Embassy in real danger. Maybe it would have been better if they'd thrown me out over it, or put me up on charges and thrown me in jail for it. I'd probably be getting out right about now. Maybe that would have been the better outcome, instead of this. Instead of letting me rise so high, that my downfall would hurt every other Komarran in the Service."

 

"I'm going to tell you a secret, Duv Galeni," Laisa says once Duv has calmed down and can bear to look at her again. "You can go home again. You just have to swallow your pride and not expect to be welcomed with open arms. You have to work for your welcome. We might owe you an apology for how you were treated after your father died-- disappeared, but we don't owe you an apology for _your_ actions. Do I think you need to apologize? I don't know. What have you done? You know that, I don't. I'm in no position to judge you, but I'm not in a position to forgive you, either. You're not the only collaborator who wishes there'd been other choices."

 

"You're underestimating Komarrans, Duv," Laisa says. "Or maybe overestimating, I'm not sure. To think that no one sympathizes or would understand. You left when you were a kid -- no, don't say anything, it's my turn to tell you that you're wrong, not for you to keep beating yourself up for things you can't change. Komarr was against you, but it was never everyone, it was just everyone who mattered to _you_ , wasn't it? It's not like you took a survey, Duv. And it's twenty years later, Komarr's a different place. The last time you were home, you saw it all from inside ImpSec and you saw it through their eyes. I bet you never looked around like a man coming home for the first time in twenty years and wanted to see what changed. You looked around like a man determined to see that _nothing_ had changed. Because that would mean you were right to leave, wouldn't it? So you didn't see what I see when I'm home, how integration is actually going, the ways it's working and the ways it's not working, and how it all looks now. Because we've decided to cooperate now, and that doesn't mean we're happy, because you know we're not, you're not happy about Komarr's situation either and don't try to lie to yourself about it or to anyone, you won't fool a soul. But we can't have cooperated for a decade and a half without some things changing intrinsically. Your father's methods wouldn't be tolerated anymore. We have no patience for that these days."

"It's worse now," Duv says. "From an ImpSec perspective."

"I'm sure it is," Laisa says. "I'm sure it's much easier when someone stands up and declares themselves a target. It's easier to shoot them. And we're not doing that anymore."

"Mostly not," Duv says, loyal to ImpSec to the last. "There are some."

"Stop looking at this like you're ImpSec, Duv," Laisa says. "You're not some monolith, not even in ImpSec, and especially not you. ImpSec can't turn on you and then you turn around and say you're still part of them. They can't have you every single way like that."

 

"What you have to ask yourself, Duv, and only you can answer it, is how much of this is something real, or how much of this is you putting up a fight because you think you should? Do you feel guilty? Do you really not want this promotion? How much of this is actual unwillingness to do what Allegre wants you to do? You're not an ImpSec prisoner today, Duv, and they cannot force you to take this promotion. You can resign. And if this is something you really do not want to do, then you don't have to do it. That's the damn truth and it's a choice you have to make. What comes after, that will come after. After can wait. First figure out what in the name of the six blind jumps are you going to tell Allegre when he asks for his answer."

Duv nods stiffly. "I-- yes, you're right, of course."

Laisa hesitates, not knowing how hard she can or should push, or even what she's pushing for, other than that the idea of Duv going back to ImpSec after this is physically repulsive to her, and that Duv being tempted to stay with them is even worse. "You don't have to make it right now. I'm not going to--"

"No, you're right. You're right. You make perfect sense. And when you put it like that, it's very clear. It's obvious what I was going to do as soon as he made the offer. It was obvious what he _expected_ me to do, no, maybe not expected, but... he thought I would have a knee-jerk reaction, be horrified, but be tempted by the power, by the opportunity, and I would come around and say yes, and I would take one step further into my career and not look over my shoulder, because ImpSec is the only home I have, and the only home I've had since I lost the last one. That's what Allegre, what ImpSec, expects from me.

"But what can I expect from ImpSec, really? Or this planet? I've given them my entire adult life, and I'm still their convenient scapegoat. They groomed me for this career, carefully considered every step I've taken. They've put me on this path, and my superior officer could still consider me the best scapegoat he could ever have been given. A Komarran. Of course I'm guilty. And it would have worked, too, I gather, if I didn't know Miles Vorkosigan. If Miles Vorkosigan weren't temporarily an Imperial Auditor. If I didn't have that tiny bit of nepotism on my side. If not for one lucky chance, I would be dead right now, killed in my jail cell to avoid any problems at the trial. A conveniently placed Komarran and damn everything I've ever done in my life to try to make that _not matter_. Everything I've put up with, everything I've done, what's it done for me? Only put me in the best place to be the convenient scapegoat, to die for Haroche's guilt.

"If Haroche had been a little better, no one would have cared about all of the holes in the frame. Maybe it would have come out later, but that would have been too late for me. And can I expect any better in the future? Obviously not. Because what could I expect to change? If I haven't had any affect on ImpSec or this planet by now, what could I reasonably expect to have? I'm the highest placed Komarran in the military and if not for Miles Vorkosigan, I'd be executed on a trumped-up charge.

"I don't know if I was wrong before, Laisa. It's possible. I won't lie and say I think I'm perfect or never made mistakes, but it's always been clear to me that my way was best and that it was the only thing that was going to work. If anything was going to work, this is it. And this has... _obviously_ , this has not worked. The last days of my life have testified to how much this has not worked.

"Can I expect any better? Can anything change? Allegre would ask me now, no, dare me now, to stand up as head of Komarran Affairs, and dare things not to change. But... it's not _Domestic_ Affairs, is it? If they offered me Domestic Affairs, yes, I would take that. I would stay in for that. I would take that job. That would be something. But to put a Komarran in charge of this... no, that I can't do. Beyond everything, it would only make me an even better target for anyone wanting to create a perfectly-placed scapegoat. A treason charge against the Komarran head of Komarran Affairs, now that's something that would cause crackdowns on Komarr to rival the worst of the Revolt. Can you imagine what would happen in Barrayaran policy towards Komarr if someone could get a treason charge to stick to the Komarran head of Komarran Affairs? _I can_."

"So can I," Laisa murmurs.

"I've been their darling, but I won't be their sacrifice," Duv says. "I can't survive in this game anymore. _That's_ clear. If not for one tiny chance, if it been another Auditor and not Vorkosigan, I would be dead. I can't take that chance. Komarr can't take that chance. And Allegre can't ask me to do this-- well, he can _ask_ , but he can't force me to do it, you're right. This is all much too much. I need to step back while I still have my life, and Komarr is still the way it is. Because it can get worse there, much worse. We all know how much worse it can get."

"Starvation in two years," Laisa says. 

Duv smiles wanly. "Yes. Barricade the wormholes, cut us off, let us starve. Why not? We've already done the worst to Komarr, everything but kill it entirely. The terraforming is behind schedule, thanks to Barrayar. If they could, they'd halt terraforming entirely. Why give us the chance? But I think they know, if they stop the terraforming, we have nothing left. They took our wormholes, they took our government, they took our vote and our say, they cannot take the planet from us. That's what we learned from Barrayar, in the end. How to love the planet beneath our feet. It's not the rock anymore, it's the only hope we have, the only thing we can tend to and hope it will grow beneath it all. It's the only thing we have left and it won't be able to support or sustain us for centuries. Take away terraforming and there's nothing holding us down anymore. And that would be the end of it. And I think they know it. The problem is do they care."

 

"I don't know what else I could do with my life," Duv says. "I don't know who would want me after this. I think I'd be rather suspicious of anyone who _did_ want me after this."

"How much do you have saved?" Laisa asks. "Enough for a trip back home?"

Duv nods. "Yes, and some more. I didn't have much to spend my pay on back-- when I was on duty on Komarr and I could hardly spend it all now. It'd have been suspicious."

"Then worry about it later," Laisa says. "You're a Galen, you have a say in their affairs, if you'd like to go and claim that. You never signed anything away, did you? No, I thought not," Laisa continues when Duv shakes his head. "You did a Barrayaran name change; that's legal on Komarr, but doesn't change anything to Komarrans. You never threw anything away. You're a Galen, you can go up to Kellen Galen and demand your shares and your vote in the family shipping group, if you'd like to. He'd turn blue and then red, but he'd have to give them to you. As for what they're worth, that's up to your conglomerate's bylaws and their financials, but they do owe you _something_ , they're not allowed to disown you, you can only disown yourself, and if you didn't sign anything, they can't claim that you joining the Barrayaran military was a statement of intent or effectively disowning yourself or anything of that nature. You haven't taken from the conglomerate's well since you were at least seventeen. You have birth-shares. Only you can sell them or refuse them, and you haven't. So they owe you."

Duv looks like he's never considered any of that. And why would he? He'd cut himself off so completely from Komarr, never allowed himself to think about going back. Laisa's frankly impressed he still has hobbies, that ImpSec hasn't swallowed him so completely that he's nothing but a shell for their propaganda, that he has time for more than eating, sleeping, and oppression. It's just a testament to who Duv is, she thinks proudly, and who he could have been if the Revolt had never happened. If the invasion had never happened.

 

"Yes, there are parts of Solstice where you'd be ripped to pieces, but there's a lot more of Barrayar where you'd be."

 

"Stop thinking like this," Laisa says. "You're thinking of yourself the way ImpSec and this planet thinks of you. Stop it."

"Yes, Dr. Toscane," Duv says. "And how will I do that?"

"It's not going to happen in a soletta spin," Laisa says. "Take a break, Duv. A vacation. Resign and then come home. You'll feel better. No, all right, you will probably feel paranoid and itchy between your shoulder blades, and you'll probably have to do things to try to calm your nerves. That's all normal. Take a break, come home, and learn who Duv Galeni is."

"I know who I am," Duv says, wooden again.

Laisa shakes her head. "You've spent the last fifteen years in the military, being a Barrayaran soldier. You need to break out of this and learn who you are when you don't have to salute the invaders."

"I chose to--," Duv starts on reflex.

Laisa interrupts him. "Yes, and now you're choosing not to. Kindly accept that it's going to take some time for you to stop feeling like you _should_. Because you won't have to anymore. Find out what you want to do when you don't have ImpSec bearing down on you, making you into their perfect soldier."

 

"I know you have hobbies, Duv," Laisa says. "You've taken me to the _symphony_."

Is it her imagination or does Duv look slightly abashed about that? "I do... like music," he says. "It's like emotions dancing in your blood. Beautiful."

"Have you ever played?" Laisa asks. "Do you harbor a dream of learning the violin? Or maybe mastering the piano? You certainly have the hands for piano, Duv. Lovely fingers."

Duv coughs hard. "I-- thank you, Laisa. That's, uh-- thank you. No, I've never played the violin. I played the piano briefly, I had lessons when I was very young. But-- the Revolt, it all quickly put an end to it," he finishes, looking flustered.

"Would you like to take it up again?" Laisa asks. "Or should we move on from the notion of Duv Galeni, concert pianist?"

"Yes, let's," Duv says.

"You can certainly put your ImpSec skills to good use," Laisa says. "I don't want to sound like I would, or Komarr would, expect you to let them go to waste, or even want you to. There's a lot of good that can be done with your expertise. The terraforming projects can always use someone with skill and experience with high-level explosives. I'm sure the companies would snap you in a heart beat if you showed an interest in destruction for the sake of creation."

Duv looks startled. "I... never did have much to do with explosives."

Laisa shrugs. "It's a thought. ImpSec's so purposely impenetrable, I don't know _what_ you've spent fifteen years doing. But you've learned things in ImpSec that are valuable that aren't just how to spy on people. You could let the offers come to you, figure out what you like. You're pretty famous back home, Duv," well, infamous, really, "people will see some possibilities and come to you."

"God, Laisa, that's ImpSec's worst nightmare, people deciding to cultivate me. We'll have to see if they'd even let me off the planet with what's in my head about Komarr. I don't think they will."

"So even after this, they don't trust you." As expected, really.

"Allegre doesn't trust anyone, not that much. He's the one with the job to take down Admiral Vorkosigan if he has to. He likes me, but he's not going to let me walk into the welcoming arms of Komarran agitators. And after what happened on Earth... he'd probably have well-earned doubts about how well I'd be able to tell if someone-- well, I don't think he trusts my judgment when it comes to if people want to use me. It just takes the wrong comment to the wrong person, after all. I don't need to know I'm betraying Barrayar to betray it."

So what Duv's saying is that ImpSec's paranoid. Well, Laisa knew that. "Everyone on Komarr is going to think you'd still be informing to ImpSec." And he probably will be, even after this. Duv might call it corresponding with old colleagues, but Laisa doesn't doubt what'll be in those letters.

"High risk, high reward," Duv says, lips twitching. "Isn't that the Galen motto?" But then he sighs. "People will try, Laisa. I'm a very attractive target, after all. Half the Komarrans on the planet saw what happened."

"Come to the Syndicate's Winterfair party, let half the Komarrans on the planet see that you walked away from it." Everyone will have heard by now, but it will do Duv good to be seen, and it will do him good to see how everyone is reacting. He doesn't have to be liked by Komarrans for them to be rightly concerned by what happened to him.

 

"Who do _you_ think I am?" Duv asks plaintively.

Laisa puts her hand on his shoulder. "A work in progress."

 

\---

 

Laisa doesn't think she was wrong to love Barrayar. She'd always known what it was. She'd known that its veneer wasn't all of it. But she'd fallen in love anyway.

But she can't stop being a Komarran. Even if she could forget -- which she never would -- they won't let her. Even Duv, who'd cut Komarr out of his heart with surgical precision, he'd still been too much of a Komarran for them.

She can't stay here.

She'll probably come back. There's still a part of her that feels at home here, that loves the wind on her face, that loves the grass and the trees and the parks, that loves how the world grows without being cultivated, that loves how the history of each city is written on it in a language she can read.

She loves the weather of it all, she loves the layers to the sky, how you can go out away from the cities and be surrounded by wild growth, by animals that live without being tended. She loves it all in the opposite of the way she loves Komarr. They'd had to dig life out of Komarr, pour blood into it, bring back everything they could to build a planet that never should have supported life. Barrayar had to be terraformed, but it never had to grow its own atmosphere.

And she loves it here, she loves the native vegetation for its beauty despite its poison, and she loves the world that's grown up around it.

But that world will only welcome her until specific circumstances, and Laisa's lost her reserves of patience.

She's going home.

She doesn't regret coming here. She would never regret meeting Delia or befriending Duv. She doesn't regret riding a horse or wearing a swirling skirt or getting snowed on.

But it's time to go home.

 

\---

 

Finally, as if in forgiveness for all of the pain of the last few weeks, Winterfair arrives and, with it, enough snow that even Delia admits to being impressed. She takes care to help Laisa dress properly for it, selecting her clothes, steering her away from things that she'll regret later. She hasn't known too many Komarrans, but she's known galactics. They always underestimate the weather. If this is to be Laisa's last hurrah on Barrayar, Delia doesn't want to regret any of it.

Delia's dressed warmly in a new dress, the annual extravagant gift from Lady Alys to celebrate them all not dying between Gregor's birthday and the long-awaited arrival of Winterfair. This year they have more to celebrate than before, Lady Alys had said delicately, but she's been smiling much more and Simon Illyan will be officially escorting her to Gregor's party, so Delia had only grinned and said nothing indelicate. Lady Alys had snorted and told her not to try to teach her grandmother to listen at doors.

The dress is a glorious blue and reminds Delia of Laisa's eyes when she smiles, the way it lights up a room.

They arrive in good time to the Residence, though it's a close thing. Even the driver had underestimated the snow.

 

Laisa dances with the Emperor for one last time and then he hands her off to Delia Koudelka with a polite murmured greeting to Delia, his attention probably already caught on the next woman Lady Alys has for him to dance with. Laisa's not too sure anymore how she really feels about Barrayar, but she'll always be able to tell the story of how the Emperor of Barrayar danced with her every time she saw him, because she was never going to be a candidate for Empress.

See, she wants to tell Barrayar, Komarrans do fill a vital niche in Vorbarr Sultana.

 

The fundamental truth is, Duv's always said, is that you aren't going to win fights with ImpSec. You can't. That's the nature of the beast. But that's also to your advantage. You _know_ you aren't going to win those fights. Those are, at best, distractions for them, and, at worst, distractions for you.

You win the fights around ImpSec. And then ImpSec fights with itself. But you've got to get ImpSec fighting itself for you, not against you.

And that's why he's stayed for so long, Laisa realizes now. And that's why it's so important that he's getting out. He's conceding the fight. He's saying, ImpSec can keep fighting themselves about this without me. He wouldn't quit if he weren't, at some level, quietly confident that the correct side would win. Meaning, this time, in this world, that Allegre would win. Duv's saying: now the Chief of ImpSec is on our side. _Now_ we have some ammunition in this battle.

And now Duv's standing aside and letting it go on without him.

Laisa's never been prouder of him.

And he's gotten out alive. Well, one minute after midnight tonight, he'll have gotten out of it alive. Alive, with his reputation mostly mended -- not intact, but not in pieces either. It's good enough. It's definitely the best they're going to get.

It's certainly something to celebrate.

 

"What a year," Ivan grumbles. "Gregor turns thirty-five and is no closer to getting married. Uncle Aral collapses and then moves to Sergyar. Simon Illyan _proposes to my mother_ ," Ivan pauses to ensure his audience understands the truly horrifying level of despair that this deserves, "Donna Vorrutyer turned into a legal man, and we all made it through and no one died."

"I'll drink to that," Delia says.

They drink to that.

"What a year," Ivan repeats, and takes another drink.

 

"Olivia," Tante Cordelia greets warmly. "You must introduce me to your young man."

Olivia flushes.

"I've heard so much about him," Tante Cordelia says. "Mostly from ImpSec, so I'm eager to hear all the details."

Olivia stammers out something about Donna. Delia can barely make out what it is, but Tante Cordelia sails smoothly onward, having understood every word.

"Of course I love the scheme," Tante Cordelia says. "If Vor inheritance is a joke and we keep making a mockery of it, not even the Vor are going to keep taking it seriously. And good riddance, too," Tante Cordelia adds firmly. "It's about time."

 

Duv is there, dressed in the most formal of formal uniforms, with the proper decorations and insignias, as befitting a man attending on the Emperor at the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Duv's silver eyes are shined to perfection and they look even more vicious than they usually do: a Komarran proudly wearing the symbols of the invading forces, a Komarran working openly for the secret police.

Laisa doesn't even feel the slightest discomfort at that today, but maybe it's because this is the end of it all. Tonight is Duv's last chance to be seen this way, and then it's all over. He'll be merely Doctor Galeni once again, and perhaps they could convince him to come home. Maybe. 

Duv should come home, Laisa thinks. He'll like what he'll see once he doesn't have Horus eyes seeing everything for him.

 

"Captain Galeni," Delia says, smiling gently at him. "How are you?"

"Better," Duv says. He is holding a wine glass in his hand like he was born with it there. Delia is pleased to note that his knuckles are completely healed and he doesn't have any hint of the bruises that he'd had in the cells.

"When is your retirement official?" Delia asks.

"One minute after midnight," Duv replies. "A few hours now." Delia would bet he knows the time remaining down to the minute.

"Looking forward to being simply Doctor Galeni again?" Doctor Toscane asks him. She slips her hand through Delia's arm. Delia unconsciously leans into her, enjoying the solid feel of her next to her, warm and comforting and gorgeous. She could get used to this, Delia thinks. She hopes she'll get the chance.

"I have no idea what I'm going to do now," Duv admits. He fingers the braid on his sleeve. "Tomorrow, I'm a civilian. I can start to decide then."

Laisa nods and Delia gives him a comforting smile.

"I'm planning a visit to Komarr after I graduate," Delia says. "Laisa promised to show me around. Maybe you could come with us?" Duv looks ImpSec-blank at that, so Delia shrugs, lightly brushing it off. "You don't need to make a decision now, of course. We haven't even made real plans yet. Think about it."

 

Across the room, the Emperor gives Delia a solemn nod. Next to him, Allegre makes a small gesture and Duv nods to him. A question, Delia realizes, not a summons, and Duv answered.

"Allegre's being paternal," Duv says, sounding amazed. "I-- paternal, like a father, not like _mine_. I told him he won't change my mind and he says he doesn't expect to. I think he's trying to impart as many words of wisdom about living as a civilian as he can before the new year turns over and I become one. Although what Allegre knows about being a civilian, I'm not sure. And I don't think he's sure, either, but that's not stopping him from trying."

"Well, that's good," Laisa says. "Better than you'd thought, isn't it?"

"Yes, much," Duv says. "That said, Allegre wouldn't know paternal from a kindergarten, but he's trying. I'd known he was overly invested in my career -- he's the reason I even have one, he wrote one of my references for the Academy -- but it seems even he has emotions," Duv says, even more amazed. "Overly invested in my life. Wanted to know if I was planning on starting a family, if that was why I decided I wanted out. Waxed almost poetic about wanting to get away from the plasma fire and settle down and buy a farm. He's almost a Vor stereotype, for someone as unVor as he is. And I'm sure he'll laugh his head off when he gets that back from the spies here," but Duv doesn't seem too put-off by that, so Delia assumes it's some kind of ImpSec humor and the teasing is perfectly acceptable, nothing that's going to come back and bite Duv in the ass. 

 

"I'm glad I came here," Laisa says. "I'm really glad I met you."

Delia's smile is so wide, her cheeks ache. "I'm so glad I met you, too." She's looking forward to seeing Komarr through Laisa's eyes, the same way Delia had shown Laisa all her favorite parts of Vorbarr Sultana. Kareen got to go off planet for school; Delia's going to be more like Tante Cordelia, and go off planet with her lover.

Delia's too tied to Barrayar to ever leave permanently, not even if she falls in love with Komarr the way she's fallen in love with Laisa. But she's looking forward to this visit, so excited by the possibilities. She can't help but dream of the future. Laisa's family owns a shipping fleet and Laisa's used to planet-hopping every few years. Delia's research could take her anywhere.

Barrayar will always be home, but Delia's looking forward to expanding her universe of experience into the entire galaxy. There's always more to see out there. And she's going to start with Komarr. She's going to meet Laisa's planet and Laisa's family.

 

 

They slip out just before midnight and join the group of guests gathered out in the courtyard, huddled in their warm coats and drinking mulled cider. Delia takes Laisa's hand and settles them down to watch.

The fireworks display is everything it always is, and Delia cranes her neck to watch it all, Laisa's hand warm in hers, and Delia feels something inside her finally relax. She bends her elbow and leans into Laisa and kisses her and overhead, the stars explode into colorful constellations and joy.

What a year, Delia thinks. She wonders what the next one is going to bring.

[the end]

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1025252.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/181554921705/multitudes-64409-words-by-lanna-michaels)


End file.
